SAAC to SHU: give us pre-registration
Nine of 11 NEC schools allow student-athletes to pre-register
Dario Melendez The Spectrum
Issue date: 11/17/05 Section: Sports
Another problem that some student-athletes are faced with is the scheduling of required core courses, such as religious studies and philosophy courses. A student at Sacred Heart is required to take either two religion courses and one philosophy course or two philosophy courses and one religion course in order to graduate.
But Sacred Heart only offers 15 religious studies introduction courses a semester, with eight of the courses between 9:15 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. All of the classes combined only hold 450 students, which is just over half of the 850 student athletes, alone, that attend the university.
"If an athletic team schedules its daily practices from 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.," Connerty said, "it would put a student-athlete in a bind in this situation, because it would cut the number of available spots in half. It is not fair to a student-athlete to be forced to miss a class or a practice because of an insufficient amount of course offerings that the university provides."
But Bozzone doesn't feel that the number of classes offered by Sacred Heart should affect student-athlete pre-registration.
"Sacred Heart is not big enough to allow certain students to register before others," Bozzone said. "The only students that get preferred registration are seniors who need to graduate. The system has been proven to work and is fair, but most importantly, doesn't favor anyone.
"And if I am not mistaken, coaches just want to get their players out there, even if they are a little late. And it has been from my personal experience that some of my best students are student-athletes," he said.
Pre-registration is not merely a recent issue. The SAAC and many individual student-athletes have been fighting the administration for the right to have pre-registration for years.
Erin Caveney, a former softball outfielder from Spofford, N.H., experienced registration agony while searching for marketing courses to fulfill her major requirements.
But Sacred Heart only offers 15 religious studies introduction courses a semester, with eight of the courses between 9:15 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. All of the classes combined only hold 450 students, which is just over half of the 850 student athletes, alone, that attend the university.
"If an athletic team schedules its daily practices from 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.," Connerty said, "it would put a student-athlete in a bind in this situation, because it would cut the number of available spots in half. It is not fair to a student-athlete to be forced to miss a class or a practice because of an insufficient amount of course offerings that the university provides."
But Bozzone doesn't feel that the number of classes offered by Sacred Heart should affect student-athlete pre-registration.
"Sacred Heart is not big enough to allow certain students to register before others," Bozzone said. "The only students that get preferred registration are seniors who need to graduate. The system has been proven to work and is fair, but most importantly, doesn't favor anyone.
"And if I am not mistaken, coaches just want to get their players out there, even if they are a little late. And it has been from my personal experience that some of my best students are student-athletes," he said.
Pre-registration is not merely a recent issue. The SAAC and many individual student-athletes have been fighting the administration for the right to have pre-registration for years.
Erin Caveney, a former softball outfielder from Spofford, N.H., experienced registration agony while searching for marketing courses to fulfill her major requirements.