In print | Published January 28, 2010

As The Phoenix strongly supports the relationship that Swarthmore has with Bryn Mawr and Haverford, we feel that the college should strive to remove some of the obstacles that students often encounter when taking classes at another school in the consortium. While we recognize that some of these are too expensive to remove, others can be smoothed out to encourage more students to take advantage of the Tri-Co relationship.

One of the major obstacles to taking a class at Bryn Mawr or Haverford is the registration process. Currently, a student must discuss with and obtain signatures from her advisor, the head of the department from which she wants to receive credit, and Swarthmore’s registrar. Only then can she travel to Haverford or Bryn Mawr, obtain approval from the professor and registrar there and enroll in the course. Also, the software used by the Swarthmore Registrar is different from and incompatible with the software used at Bryn Mawr and Haverford. Transitioning to a common system would require at least one college to purchase a new software package and retrain most of its IT staff, professors and workers in the Registrar’s office. Doing so would be prohibitively expensive even in economically better times, and the process for such a change usually proceeds very gradually, taking place over a period of several semesters. Unfortunately, it is unreasonable to expect a further integration of Swarthmore College’s course registration system with that of the other two colleges.
While we cannot hope to simplify the registration procedure at the other two Tri-Co colleges in the near future, some steps can be taken to make the entire process easier for students. Swarthmore students who take classes at either Haverford or Bryn Mawr will naturally want to eat some meals there. Currently, students have to request meal vouchers to eat at either of the other colleges at Sharples each week that they want to do so, and these vouchers can only be used at a specified meal on a specified day. This hassle can be easily overcome by asking Swarthmore’s Dining Services to automatically exchange meals with the equivalent departments at Bryn Mawr and Haverford for students who are registered at the other colleges. We propose the creation of a Tri-Co meal card, which would indicate that a Swarthmore student who takes a class at Haverford or Bryn Mawr is entitled to a given amount of meals there, which would then be deducted from his Swarthmore meal plan each week.

Another step that can be taken is to further extend wireless internet access to Tri-Co visitors, whether they are faculty, staff, or students, across the three campuses. Currently, students from the other two colleges receive a temporary account at Swarthmore while they are enrolled that will let them use all the same ITS services that Swarthmore students enjoy. But faculty and staff from the other colleges do not have such a temporary account, and neither do Bryn Mawr and Haverford students who are merely visiting Swarthmore rather than registering for a class. We can all appreciate the current efforts of ITS to make it easier for visitors to access wireless Internet at Swarthmore. Having access to wireless Internet on the campuses is a courtesy that we believe all Tri-Co members, and particularly those students taking advantage of the consortium, should be able to enjoy.

The college does not seem to be actively promoting the Tri-Co relationship to current students. We do see, however, that the administration advertises the Tri-Co relationship to prospective students: Swarthmore’s website highlights it and tour guides make sure to explain the benefits of cross-registration. And for good reason. Some departments depend on students being able to take courses at Haverford or Bryn Mawr. The Modern Languages department, for instance, acknowledges on its website that a major in Arabic usually requires students to take classes either at Bryn Mawr or at the University of Pennsylvania. Furthermore, students who want to take a class in a particular department in a particular semester, but cannot do so for one of various reasons, often benefit from being able to take classes at Bryn Mawr and Haverford. When classes are full and professors are on leave, students are able to take equivalent or substitute classes at one of the other colleges.

Traveling between Swarthmore and the two other colleges only takes 20-25 minutes and vans are plentiful. We recognize that class schedules between the three colleges vary and that scheduling conflicts might arise for students hoping to take a class at either Bryn Mawr or Haverford. Yet we hope this problem and some of the other inconveniences we highlighted will be overcome so that we may encourage more Swarthmore students to take advantage of what the other colleges have to offer in terms of academics.

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