As students enrolled at Southern University for the 2002 summer session hurried to locate their various classes, many were greeted with the sound of closing doors.
Upon arrival many students were informed of the cancellation various classes.
Although enrollment has remained constant over the past several years, many sections of various courses were closed due to rearrangement of department budgets.
“Classes were closed due to the re-organization of departments,” said Dean of Academic Affairs, Brenda Birkett. “Summer school classes are offered as needed.”
Many departments opted to merge smaller classes together, causing students to drop classes to make up for the timing conflict caused by the rescheduling of another class.
“When I made my schedule, I did not start until 10 a.m. I now have an 8 a.m. class because one of my teachers rescheduled my noon class,” said Kimberly Mitchell, a 20-year old senior majoring in Psychology from Monroe.
Although telephone and online registration was made available as early as the end of April, many students still found themselves waiting in line to add classes that were dropped from the school files due to incorrect dating of billing statements.
“I got here early Monday to pay my fees thinking I had until Thursday, June 6 to pay before my classes would be deleted from the computer,” said Michelle Howard, a 19-year old sophomore majoring in therapeutic recreation from Houston. “All the person working the line could tell me was the date was incorrect and all the classes had been deleted the night before. I asked myself ‘what was the point of early registration?’”
As of press time the official enrollment count had not been calculated, but according Birkett enrollment has not had a major increase or decrease over the past few years.
