The Registrar’s Office has drawn mixed reactions from academic departments across campus for a new policy that limits the times sections can meet each day.

Due to shrinking classroom space, the Registrar’s Office instituted a new policy this year that attempts to minimize overcrowding of courses during the peak hours of 11 a.m. through 2 p.m. The new policy limits most classes and sections that meet once per week to either 8 a.m. or after 2:15 p.m., which results in difficulty scheduling colloquium courses and discussion sections.

Early morning classes are notoriously unpopular among students and teaching assistants (TAs) alike, while afternoon classes often conflict with the typical practice schedules of student athletes.

“There are the same number of rooms available, no matter the time of day,” Associate Registrar Jackie Charonis said, clarifying the need for the new system. “We have an excessively large number of small courses, and often we simply don’t have enough rooms at peak hours.”

However, some TAs say they are put in a bind as a result of the new regulations, as it is increasingly difficult to schedule convenient discussion section times.

“Given the high percentage of students here at Stanford who play sports or engage in other extracurricular activities, this policy seems illogical,” Brad Bouley, a TA and second-year History Ph.D. student, said in an email to The Daily. “It works to keep students from our classes rather than enabling them to come.”

Though the new policy was introduced near the end of the 2006-07 academic year, its effects were not realized until this year, and some departments have reacted more strongly than others.

Problems have been concentrated in the large humanities and social sciences departments, including Psychology, History and Political Science. Due to small class sizes and a large number of discussion sections, such departments have resorted to assigning conference spaces and meeting rooms as emergency classroom spaces.

Due to greater control over their buildings and designated lab spaces, however, the natural sciences and Computer Science departments have not witnessed the same problems.

“I think the Registrar needs to pay more attention to the actual lives of students and faculty members,” said History Prof. Richard White. “This has made things incredibly inconvenient.”

Yet the Registrar’s changes are not a black-and-white affair.

“The fall-off in demand outside of [11 a.m. to 2 p.m] is difficult to address,” said Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education John Bravman ‘79. “I’m certainly aware that there’s an acute space shortage.”

Bravman added that an aversion to early morning and late afternoon classes is something that administrators have faced for years.

“A lot of this is a culture change that just gets worse over time,” he said. “This isn’t a new situation.”

He also pointed to efforts that have been made to alleviate the space crunch on campus, including shortening IHUM sections from 90 to 60 minutes.

“That’s a bigger impact than any one department can make,” Bravman said, “and I feel that should be felt more as it is a very substantial reduction.”

While such changes help to alleviate the problem, the needs of every department cannot be fully addressed.

“The times aren’t workable,” said Lindsay Quandara, a Political Science Student Services Specialist. “They’ve put themselves in a hard place for classroom usage. When it comes to section scheduling, I have TAs banging down my door.”

Not all departments, however, have been inconvenienced by the changes; the French and Italian Department reported business as usual.

“Our relations with the Registrar have gone very smoothly,” said French and Italian Administrative Assistant Christine Onorato. “I’ve found the Registrar to be very accommodating of room changes, and they’ve addressed the specific needs of many faculty members. I’ve found most of the process to be transparent.”

The Registrar controls only 170 classrooms, and departments have increasingly had to rely upon rooms they control in order to fulfill the needs of their sections.

“We’re thinking of asking every department to cough up a conference room,” said Sharon Velten, Student Services Officer in the Registrar’s Office. “My impression is that a lot of that space goes unused, and we feel we have a right to ask for the proprietary space.”

Onorato noted, however, that such space is necessary for other uses.

“We have access to four DLCL [Division of Literatures, Cultures and Languages] rooms but there’s a caveat to assigning classes to those rooms,” Onorato said. “They’re also the designated places for interviews, meetings and graduate student activities and research.”

As complaints continue to arise, the Registrar’s Office is working to address concerns about the new policy.

“We are revisiting meeting patterns going into the next year,” Velten said. “We’ve been meeting with selected department administrators, and we’re especially looking towards expanding available time slots on Fridays.”

While the Registrar’s Office works to improve the system, some faculty members are begrudgingly accepting the new policy.

“Once the changes were set, I had to conform my whole schedule around the new terrain,” White said. “It’s not something I’m going to want to go through changing again.”

Others, however, note that there is room for improvement.

“The key is to have flexibility,” said History Prof. Barton Bernstein. “The Registrar needs to be more supple in its conception of ideas and more supple in their implementation.”