Yesterday I tried to drop a class, and the online course enrollment system gave me an error message.
So I went to the course advisor and explained my situation. “Oh, that’s because if you’re a dual-degree student, the system won’t let you drop down to zero classes for either one of your degrees. I remember so-and-so had the same problem last year.”
“But I thought that was allowed.”
“Oh, it’s totally allowed, no rules against it. It’s just a bug in the system. Go to the Student Services Center, they’ll help you.”
So today I went to the Student Services Center and explained what happened. “Oh yeah, that’s just because you’re a dual-degree student; we see this bug all the time. Fill out this form, give it back to us, and we’ll override the system and drop the course for you within five business days.”
I looked down at the form, titled Petition to Change Course Enrollment. The first section asked you to check off a box to specify the type of request. And the first option was “dual-degree student trying to drop down to zero classes for one degree.”
Like … I feel like if you are at the point of printing forms for students to fill out to request that administrators manually override the system every time they encounter this bug, it might be easier to just fix the bug?