Hey, everyone.
Has anyone ever stopped to consider the 1599 other kids attending their fair institution? Not so much? How about the other 399 in your year? Getting warmer?
Okay.
Well, I have, at least in terms of my major and then I realized: I don’t really know who my fellow English majors are. Okay, so that’s somewhat of a lie and/or fabrication because I see the same familiar faces in almost all of my classes within the major, but it does bring up an interesting question: Why is there no formalized way to figure out who is dedicating themselves to the same major as I am? Maybe there is a list somewhere and I’m just being thick, but I think it would be useful if each department, somewhere on their website, always had an updated list of people who have declared that major (maybe updated at the beginning of each semester?).
At least that way, I could seek out another ‘09 I’d like to talk about the comps. summer reading with or at least know for sure that that cute girl in my Fiction Writing class is in fact a major and not just a poseur from whatever else department. 
But in general, it might create a nice feeling of community within the majors and who would fight that?
5 responses so far ↓
1 Dave Ullman (dullman10) // May 21, 2008 at 12:55 am
Good idea, Steve. There’s no reason why that information shouldn’t be reasonably available to members of the school community. Here’s a way we could do it:
The major could be a field (or 2-3 fields) on the campus directory, and automatically update when a student declares a major. That way, when looking up a student, you could see his or her major. To find, say, all the ’09s who have declared the English major, you could use the advanced search to enter that criteria and get a list, just as you can get a list of 10’s living in Stone or ’11s from Montana.
And just as we are given control of how private certain information is (for example, phone numbers can be available to anyone on-campus, just faculty/staff, or no one), we can also give students the option to keep their major information private if they so choose.
This sounds like a job for the IT Policy committee of AAS. Let’s remember to let them know how we feel in the fall.
2 Dave Ullman (dullman10) // May 21, 2008 at 1:01 am
Edit: Phone numbers can be available to the general public, everyone on campus, or just faculty and staff.
3 Stephen Stewart (sastewart09) // May 21, 2008 at 7:32 am
Thanks for taking this idea further, Dave. I think that would be the best way to disclose the information since it still gives each person a choice of wishing to disclose it or not and I think that’s highly important in regards to privacy.
Do you know who spearheads this AAS committee? I’ll be sure to draft something early in September to let them know this is important to us.
4 Dave Ullman (dullman10) // May 21, 2008 at 5:02 pm
Well, according to their webpage, we could contact Charmel Maynard ‘07, but I think the members have probably changed the past few years.
5 Stephen Stewart (sastewart09) // May 21, 2008 at 5:56 pm
Yeah, he was the president last year, lol. It’s probably someone else now…I hope…
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