THIS SEMESTER’S manual registration (ManReg) received online backlash from members of the Loyola Schools (LS) community who have claimed that the system is ineffective, resulting in a stressful start to the semester for students, school administrators, and faculty alike.

Aside from the issues students encountered during online enlistment, like the lack of class slots and system crashes, the forefront of this year’s ManReg problems were the delays in schedule brought about by inclement weather. 

Following a number of class suspensions, ManReg’s original schedule was pushed back to begin on August 10, Saturday, instead of August 5, Monday, forcing organizers to accommodate various year levels within two days.

August 10 accommodated the ManReg schedules for sophomores, seniors, superseniors, and graduate students, while August 13 was allotted for freshmen, juniors, transferees, international exchange students, and graduate students. 

With free-for-all ManReg held on the first day of classes for the LS, many students had to miss classes to line up outside the Registrar’s Office at the Social Sciences Building.

According to Sanggunian President Quiel Quiwa, the first day of classes was not moved to a later date to accommodate free-for-all ManReg because that would entail pushing back the academic calendar to end classes on December 22 instead of December 18.

Quiwa reassured that the school administrators’ solutions are already in motion to address ManReg concerns for an improved enlistment process, but until such solutions are implemented, these problems will continue to be a biannual concern.

Surfacing problems

Ateneo Registration Committee (RegCom) School of Humanities and School of Social Sciences Venue Overseer Airon Velasco claimed that system crashes experienced during online enlistment are not preventable when AISIS can only handle “around 2,500 students at a time.” According to him, the rationale behind batch numbers is an attempt to “alleviate the server crashing concerns.”

“Above more than [2,500] and [AISIS] starts to crash,” Velasco said.

Quiwa added that until AISIS is updated, online enlistment problems will only become more prevalent as the LS undergraduate population is expected to boom to 10,000 by 2022.

Velasco also cited the lack of slots during online enlistment as a prevalent issue faced during ManReg.

Velasco said that the Registrar informs the different departments of how many slots they should open for each class based on the students’ advisement. Despite this, Velasco noted that students still run out of slots in the classes they are advised to take. Such was the case for Donamae Valdez (2 AB COM), who fulfilled her department’s advisement on time.

“As soon as I logged into AISIS on enlistment day, there were zero slots left for both the major and elective I was supposed to enlist in,” Valdez said. 

Quiwa said that for some required courses, like Foreign Language and Culture, the limited amount of slots is arranged to prevent other classes from being dissolved. He said that more slots cannot be opened in certain classes to prevent too many students from enlisting in one class and not enough in another.

Students proceed to ManReg because of AISIS-related concerns like these, but ManReg comes with a plethora of issues as well.

In an online survey promoted on the Sabihin sa Sanggu page, a total of 83 responses from students were forwarded to the Admin Council for the improvement of the registration process. While the detailed results were not released publicly,  a summary of the data showed the percentages of students’ satisfaction and efficiency ratings for ManReg. Common concerns regarding the batching system, deadline of late tuition fees, and load revision, among others were reflected in the unpublicized data. 

Quiwa said that according to the survey, students still found the long lines during ManReg to be their biggest concern.

Additionally, some departments did not consider staying open for a later time on the day of ManReg, leaving many students with unaddressed enlistment concerns. Despite being part of Batch 1, Jubelle Gordo (2 AB POS) claimed to have “[waited] eight hours for nothing.” Past incidents involve students being directed to a department who are unaware of their concern, resulting in a complicated back-and-forth process. 

Unavoidable matters 

In RegCom’s case, Membership Overseer Teresa Carnecer said that the main cause of concern for ManReg is not the nature of the problems, but the repetition of the same issues every year. Carnecer observed that this issue is further aggravated by the steady increase of students who have to go through ManReg every year. 

Despite RegCom’s online portal for collating enlistment concerns during ManReg, Carnecer said that ManReg experiences a back-log due to a multitude of the same problems that have to be addressed all at once. Velasco added that the actual ManReg process is also prolonged because only one secretary per department is tasked with addressing RegCom’s calls about students’ enlistment concerns.

Quiwa also mentioned that the total population of the University that went through ManReg for the first semester was at 21.45%, which he considered high as this is 2,133 of the total student population of 9,942.

On the other hand, Velasco expressed that this year’s ManReg was not necessarily an “outlier” compared to other years—it was just a “matter of perception.” According to him, the free-for-all registration being situated at only one venue—the Office of the Registrar—instead of four made the number of students seem more populated. 

With regard to this, Velasco asserted that RegCom members themselves cannot hasten the long lines during ManReg because the speed of the processes is up to the departments involved. 

Preventive measures

Given the circumstances that led to enlistment problems like long lines, merged batch schedules, closed departments, and long waiting hours, both the Sanggunian and RegCom have tried to provide solutions with the help of the suggestions from the LS community. 

Velasco mentioned that in solving the race for slots, some students have suggested an equal batching system like that of the Talakayang Alay sa Bayan (TALAB) enlistment. However, Velasco noted that this is not feasible because the availability of semestral classes are dependent on a student’s distinct advisement, whereas TALAB classes are open to all.  

Another solution forwarded to RegCom is for the University to buy more AISIS servers to accommodate more students enlisting at the same time. Velasco said that the problem here is that this surge of AISIS users is seasonal, and that it would be “useless” to spend millions on this. 

In the Magtanong sa VP at Mga Dekano forum, Quiwa mentioned that the update for AISIS will focus on the improvement of its user interface, making online enlistment more user-friendly. However, Velasco said that everything is still in its early development stage. “There are not much details yet regarding how specifically it would be made and implemented,” he explained.

In a Special Administrations Council Meeting on October 11, Quiwa shared that among the solutions discussed for ManReg were regular checks on the number of students advised, flexibility of faculty in adjusting their schedules, and avoidance of complex tags and remarks, among others. 

According to him, the offices involved, along with the help of a systems expert, are currently reviewing the first draft of next semester’s registration process in order to minimize such conflicts. As such, Quiwa expressed the need for better coordination and transparency between the Registrar and the different department secretaries. “As Sanggu, as students, we call on the admin and the faculty to be transparent with one another, to talk to each other,” he said.