A week before spring semester classes started, Arthur Davidson, CC ’10, logged into CourseWorks, and was surprised by what he saw.
One of his courses, Life After Death, taught by religion professor Alan Segal at Barnard College, had disappeared. Instead of having the full 14 credits he needed to graduate, he only had 11.
“I had to e-mail my dean and call a buddy in the class to ask what happened,” Davidson said. “And [the buddy] told me Columbia cancelled it for no reason.”
Davidson is not alone in his confusion over canceled classes. Several students say that classes were dropped with little or no notification from the University, though officials from the registrar maintain that they have kept students informed of the changes, which occurred for specific reasons.
Constance Brown, a lecturer in English and the Barnard registrar, wrote in an e-mail that Life After Death was cancelled on Dec. 18. She said that the Columbia registrar sent an automated e-mail to all students enrolled in the course without delay.
“The CourseWorks manager tells me that a course is never removed from the site,” Brown wrote in an e-mail. “But that students are dropped from it as soon as they are dropped in the Columbia database.”
According to Brown, students were dropped from Life After Death on Jan. 4. Elizabeth Castelli, the chair of the religion department, told Brown that she e-mailed all the students who had signed up for the course in mid-December to alert them of the cancellation, but Davidson said he didn’t receive any notice.
“Columbia was so poor about telling students about it,” Davidson said. “I found out after I could even find a new class, and I came out with not enough credits to graduate. If we had just gotten more time and they had some system in place to notify the students, then we’d be totally cool with it,” he added.
Brown explained that the medical condition of Segal, the professor of the class, prevented him from teaching the course this semester.
A Better Planet By Design, a course that counts toward the science core requirement at Columbia College, was also cancelled before the class met.
“It just disappeared from SSOL [Student Services Online] and CourseWorks, no one actually told me,” Michael Spitzer-Rubenstein, CC ’12, said. “It’s kind of ridiculous. You’d think they could at least shoot me an e-mail or something or post an announcement on Courseworks.”
Because of the cancellation, Spitzer-Rubenstein said he is forced to take a science class next year.
Cultures of Colonialism, taught by assistant professor of English Bashir Abu-Manneh, was also cancelled this semester because the professor took on other responsibilities.
Brown responded that the English class was cancelled in the Barnard database on Dec. 9, though Columbia did not officially cancel it until Jan. 4 because “they waited until after exams were over.” She added that students enrolled in the course also received an automated e-mail about the cancellation.
“Neither course should have been on any student’s CourseWorks site after every January,” she wrote. “I can make sure that the Columbia registrar is notified at once and that there are mechanisms in place to notify students. All of that was done.”
Despite these assurances, Davidson said that the situation was very problematic.
“When a class gets unexpectedly cancelled so soon, it screws over a lot of guys,” Davidson said. “We’re second semester seniors. Everyone else can take the class next semester or the semester after that. For us, cancelling classes is more troubling because we don’t have the chance to come back.”
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