Students no longer able to choose teachers at ROTB resort to their own methods of deduction

Last year, MVHS students arrived at Running of the Bulls in the early hours hoping to change their schedules to get desired teachers. This year, their hopes were crushed.

Starting this year, teachers‘ names are no longer being released in the preliminary schedule passed out both June and August. This new policy, adopted by administration at the beginning of the 2009-2010 year, hopes to prevent the typical teacher-changing requests.

“Teacher shopping”, according to Dean of Students Michael Hicks, is selecting a different teacher than the one listed on a student’s schedule. In the past, this has been an ongoing problem for administration.  

“ROTB always turns into a [teacher] shopping extravaganza,” Hicks said. “Students are driven by a [false] perception [of a teacher] placed by peers.”

Hicks hopes that this policy will eliminate the large crowds that were present in past years.  

However, there are students who believe that concealing teachers’ names before school starts is not the most effective plan to prevent students from arriving early.

“The administration should take students complaints against teachers into more consideration,” senior Lawrence Pan said. “Having good teachers would help prevent teacher shopping.”

Last year, Pan and senior Richard Yu were part of a group of students that arrived on campus long before ROTB was scheduled to start. In fact, arriving around 6 p.m. the night before allowed Yu and Pan to place fifth and tenth in line respectively. This year, to counter the new policy, Yu has amassed section ID numbers in hopes of reconstructing his schedule and predicting his senior year teachers.

“What we did was we took the section ID numbers and we reverse-engineered the list of teachers that corresponded with the ID numbers,” Yu said. “We think that this must have been the key because [administration] took [the ID numbers] off when they released the second tentative schedule.”

Yu said that he goes through these processes because he wants to make sure that he has good teachers.

“There is a general consensus in the class of 2011 on which teachers are safe,” Yu said. “We are able to guess a range of the teachers we will get and rearrange our schedules accordingly.”