Change: For Better or Worse

By Lama Tassabehji---

In never-ending cycles, change is always persistence. It is the guiding hand serving either in constricting the cycles or expanding them. In any institution, be it minute and unheard of like some village boys scouts, or vastly popular and well known like AUB, change is always present. But change can be for the better or for the worse. Take, for example, registration at AUB. Up until the summer of 2001 hired staff registered the students' courses for them with the students hanging over their heads telling them what courses they wanted. If there was no space, students used to run to the teachers to allow more capacity in certain courses. The procedure was endless and hardly anyone was satisfied. The new registration method now takes the strain off the hired individuals because students themselves get to register their own courses via the Internet. No one said that the course availability problem was going to be resolved, except this time the student cannot run to the professor because they only have two days to register. So if you don't find a place, tough luck. Wait until drop and add, or as some professors say "come before the semester begins and I will see what I can do." Some of this change was for the better, but it only made life more hectic for students not finding room in their courses. Fine, we all agree that students abroad can now register and don't have to come back early, but they still won't find any places and on top of it all, will find the system jammed and overloaded with too many users. Another example of change is university requirements. Now there are a minimum of five other Civilization Sequence (CS) courses a student can choose from besides the already existing CS 201, 202, 203, and 204. The change is meant to be easier for new students, because they won't have to take as many CS courses. The problem is they don't know the difference, so now they have too many to choose from. The catalogue has now also changed. Supposedly when a new catalogue is printed it is meant to be better than the old one, more advanced and easier to manage. Well that would be the case if there were coordination between all the specified departments and faculties. For example, take business. Math 209 is a requirement, but now the math department has changed the name of the course to CMPS 209. The poor business students having only their catalogues to guide them, may go to the math section and find a course missing. The Dean of Student affairs has also been changed, yet we still have an acting Dean of Student Affairs. This means students have to get accustomed to yet another dean who will only be staying for a year. Next year history will repeat itself and students will once again have to acquaint themselves with another dean of student affairs as they did last year. Is this for the better, I ask you? One good change is the newly published Student Handbook, which helps students with facts, figures, dates, times, numbers and many other things about AUB that are of use to new and old students. Another development, or let us just stick to the word change, were the university identification cards. Fine, we all agree itŐs better to have standard pictures all taken from the same digital camera, but why change the ID thatŐs imprinted in everyoneŐs mind to one that is hopelessly trying to accommodate the new century? Last, but not least, Outlook, the official student publication of AUB, has undergone a dramatic change. Its editor-in-chief over the past four years has left AUB and now a new editor-in-chief attempts to fill his place. Even though we at Outlook have always objected to the method used to assign the editor-in-chief, no one claims this change in itself is wrong. A new editor-in-chief would obviously add new stamina to the publication and such change in the newspaper business is always good. But I suppose, only time will reveal if this change is for the better or the worse.