Hate preregistration? Wish you could “shop around” around for desirable courses free from the shackles of the nightmarish two-columned ranking hegemony?

Turns out you’re not alone. Ever since the administration adopted a binding preregistration policy in 1976—hoping thereby to reduce course uncertainty for professors and students alike—the annals of Wes history have been rife with instances of anti-pre-reg student activism, calling the process stressful, impersonal (sup, pre-internet techphobia?), even “a monstrosity of paperwork for North College.”

Anti-Pre-reg furor reached a peak twenty-five years ago this week, culminating with a mass protest against the newly computerized course registration system. Protest efforts included a petition urging as many students as possible to pre-register for the same math course, “thus overloading the computer with requests for this unlimited enrollment course and straining the flexibility of the drop/add period next fall.” A 4/5/85 Argus article (Students Protest Preregistration) describes the ensuing protest in excellent detail: