Educational Erosion?

But recently I realized that, with the professor’s approval, a student can enroll in a given course as late as the end of the second week of the quarter.  That means a student can officially miss 1/5 of a course and still receive credit for having taken it.

 Additionally as I previously noted, if a student has classes on MW this Winter Quarter 08 he or she will miss an additional two classes.

If then a student enrolls at the end of the second week and those two additional vacation days are thrown in the student can miss 6 of 20 courses (on a twice a week schedule) and still receive credit for the course.

Also here at UCSB the second and third weeks of the winter quarter are the weeks students, who must leave the dorms, head over to IV to sign leases for their housing for NEXT YEAR with the IV slumlords.  I hear students talking to each other over their cells about housing, trying to figure out both who they will live with next year and where. 

One student said he went out with three other guys and wanted to rent a place; the slumlords said, sure, but you will need to get your parents to co-sign, not just for you, their child, but for all the other people renting the place as well.  I have never heard of such a thing.  Is this legal?

The student shrugged.  It was just their way of getting rid of us till they found a group they liked the looks of better, he said.

And students in my Monday class—was that just yesterday—when I was beginning to feel sick and all lethargic—when I asked how they were doing honestly said they were wiped out because the first weekend of each quarter is a really big getting drunk weekend. 

So to summarize I am trying to teach something to students who are allowed back into their living area less than 24 hours before the actual start of classes.  During that first week, they must locate their classes, attend them, correct problems in scheduling, move back into their dorm rooms, and stand in long lines buying books.  The following week, especially if they are freshmen, they must go out to IV and try to find a place to live for the following year.  In the meantime, at least half of the students feel obligated via peer pressure to get drunk as skunks the first weekend of the quarter.

I do no feel this environment is particularly conducive to what I think of as education.