Some Mass Communications enrollment requests no longer required

Alyx Duckett

Contributing Writer

VCU students thinking about taking Mass Communications 203 or 204 no longer need to fill out an enrollment application for these classes.

The School of Mass Communications, up until this coming spring semester, required students to fill out an application before signing up for Mass Communications 203 Journalism Writing and Mass Communications 204 Story. The application was time consuming for both student and mass communication advisers.

David Garrison, a mass communications student adviser, said the new enrollment process is easier for students.

“The reason that there no longer is an application process for 203-204 is because it makes it easier for students to sign up beforehand because you get to sign up at your registration date,” Garrison said.

The application that students were required to fill out requested information such as cumulative GPA, entry year into VCU and concentration of the students mass communications major. Students are required to have a cumulative GPA of at least a 2.5 before they can enroll in 203 or 204. A deadline date also was in place that students had to meet in order to take the classes.

Gillan Ludlow, a VCU mass communication student, says she was pushed back a semester to apply to 203 because of her grade-point average. After completing summer classes and raising her GPA she was accepted into the class. Ludlow says she hadn’t heard the school had changed the application process, but said the new process troubled her.

“Previous students like us have worked extremely hard to get into 203,” Ludlow said.  “And now they’re just getting rid of it? That’s unfair.”

Now with no application in place, students can sign up for mass communications 203 and 204, but they must acknowledge the prerequisites still in place such as a cumulative 2.5 GPA.

Garrison says once students sign up for the classes advisers have the ability to look at rosters to check to see who has a qualifying GPA to enter the class.

“We can find out who doesn’t have the prerequisites to be in that class,” Garrison said. “And we can force withdraw them from the class.”