Registration Daze

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Posted on January 8, 2026 by Alumni

Alumni

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Sometimes, filling your class schedule was like seeking a ticket at a sold-out Taylor Swift concert.

You had to be there. And be there. And there. So went registration during South’s early decades. Melissa Wold ’75, ’80 remembers the experience, as first a student (bachelor’s in political science, master’s in public administration), then a staff academic adviser for the Pat Capps Covey College of Allied Health Professions and eventually as registrar before retiring in 2013.

When the first photo was taken in 1968 or ’69, departments set up tables in the Jag Gym. Boxes, one per class, contained computer punch cards that acted as class admission tickets. When the box was empty, the class was full.

To get in anyway, you needed to beg the professor for an override. Or, like a music fan seeking a scalper outside a sold-out concert, you could look for a student with a card you needed.

“I’m sure there were side deals going on,” Wold says, laughing. “I’m sure money was being handed over.”

By about 1980, computers began to simplify the procedure. Rows of terminals in the upstairs Ballroom at the Student Center replaced the tables. Students trained by the registrar’s office operated the machines.

Wold remembers one student who lay on the floor and said he wouldn’t move till he got the schedule he wanted. (It didn’t work.)

Mostly, though, everyone handled the experience with, if not contentment, at least quiet resignation. “They gritted their teeth,” Wold says, “and they got through it.”

 

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