Armed with sleeping bags and course catalogues, about 25 students spent the night in Moulton Union on Monday to get the choice spots in line for Tuesday's 7:30 a.m. Phase II registration.
"There were about 25 students who brought blankets and pillows and slept here so they'd be first in line for Phase II," said Registrar Christine Cote.
According to Alex Jeanty '11, some students were there well before midnight on Monday.
"Some kids showered and got ready and went over there at 10 p.m.," he said.
Tanu Kumar, a first year trying to enroll in an English class and a government class, said that she decided to sleep over after hearing that a group of students were already lined up for the morning.
"What my roommate said was that [she] wouldn't go normally but the problem is that if some people sleep there, then people think that everyone's sleeping there, and everyone goes."
While waiting for the 7:30 a.m. start of registration, students mostly studied or slept.
"I tried to sleep," Kumar added. "Some people were feverishly rifling through the course book trying to figure out what they wanted to do."
Some students, however, tried to keep the atmosphere more entertaining.
"I brought a board game," said Taylor Vozniak '12. "Me and my friends played 'Risk,' until one my friends stormed away in disgust."
Students who did not spend the night in Moulton but attended Phase II still had an early wake-up call.
Sophomore Ben Johnson said that when he arrived at Moulton at 6:15 a.m., the line had already spiraled into the Maine Lounge, and continued to get longer as he waited.
"I was actually auctioning off my spot and I got some girl up to 75 bucks," he said. "If I had sold my spot, I probably would have felt better about being there."
Students who slept over said that because they were at the beginning of the line, most of them left Phase II just shortly after it began.
"I was out by 7:50," said Kumar. "I went back to my room, and definitely slept through my 11:30 class."
According to Cote, Phase II becomes significantly less chaotic a few hours after it begins.
"It seems to me that somehow a mentality or a culture has developed that makes students believe that they have to be here at the crack of dawn to get the courses they want," she said. "For the vast majority of cases, this simply isn't the case. Once students walked in the door, most were amazed how quickly we were able to get them out of the door."
Of the 600 to 700 hundred students that register for classes during Phase II, Cote said that more than two hundred of those students were in line on Monday morning.
"We moved 215 students through in the first hour and a half on Tuesday morning. That's when we reached the end of the line," she said. "By the time we reached the last 20 or 30 students, I was talking with students who said they had arrived around 8:30 [a.m.]. At the beginning of the line, of course, were those that spent the night and then those who arrived at 5:00 a.m. and after."
Students had different impressions of their night-long vigil. According to Jeanty, the experience of sleeping over was not as fun or amusing as it might sound.
"I would compare it to a night writing a paper you're clueless about?you just sit there wondering what's your next move," he said.
Vozniak said that while some parts of the night were enjoyable, other parts were not.
"When we were camped out there it was more of a fun atmosphere," he said. "When people start arriving at 6:30 or 7 and you start to see the line grow, there's more of a stressed-out atmosphere and people are more discontent."
However, Vozniak, who was about 15th in line, said it was ultimately unnecessary to spend the night.
"If I'd gotten up at 6:30 and gone then instead, it would have been the same result," he said.
While students admit that they went to extreme measures, for some, one sleepless night seemed a better option than being locked out of courses.
"It's embarrassing that I slept in Moulton Union to get the classes I want, but if I pay the tuition to go here I don't want to take classes that I don't necessarily want to take just because they're leftover," said Kumar.