As course registration season approaches, we mourn our last semester with Polaris as our primary source for creating our class schedule. As we think about the Workday transition for fall 2025 registration, we can’t help but feel overwhelmed and left in the dark about what the future of a time-sensitive course registration holds. We are also concerned that the Workday system could threaten the liberal arts approach to course registration that the College has prioritized in the past, that of exploring a broad spectrum of topics.

The new Workday system will run on a first-come, first-served basis where students select courses based on seniority. Though the system is supposedly built to allow students of all class years to access the courses they want, we worry this system could lock seniors out from classes they need to graduate or prevent a student from taking a class only offered every two years.

We believe that the current registration system is fair and relatively stress-free, as there is no time limit, and students have more freedom to work with professors to get on waiting lists or get last-minute advice. Under Polaris, it is common for classes to be filled with a wide spectrum of class years and majors. Our concern is that the new time-sensitive Workday system will not facilitate this essential part of Bowdoin.

Along with the questions of equity, we are also concerned about the lack of guidance from the administration. The limited communication from administrators about what this change means has made this transition more daunting. To be clear, we are grateful for the technical instruction that the administration is already offering through Workday training sessions. However, this is different than communicating the big-picture changes that the switch will bring. It is unclear if we are sacrificing our academic values for the sake of technological convenience.

At a larger level, the transition to Workday for course registration represents a shift against the unique liberal arts spirit of the College. Unlike many other schools, the College encourages students to explore a broad curriculum, supported by the collaborative relationship between students and professors. With its bucket system and multiple preliminary saved schedules, the class registration system witnessed by current first years seems to have prioritized speed and degree requirements at the cost of genuine academic exploration upperclassmen have enjoyed.  We don’t want to see this happen for all students as a result of the Workday system.

Although this transition will present new challenges for students and faculty alike, we realize the outsourcing of systems will require less maintenance from Information Technology (IT) and the Office of the Registrar.

We can only hope that the transition will result in an equitable registration process that reflects Bowdoin’s academic values. Still, until we have concrete conceptions of what future registration will look like, we urge administrators to provide more consolidated, easily understandable examples of what to expect from the Workday platform—as it will eventually encapsulate other facets of academic life.

The Bowdoin Workday Enterprise Resource Planning reads:  “So while we can’t tell you exactly how things will change as we transition to Workday, we know that things will change, and hopefully this provides some guidance as to why.”

We want to know “how things will change,” especially in regards to Bowdoin academic life, and we want a commitment to a registration system that encourages exploration across disciplines.

This editorial represents the majority view of the Editorial Board, which is comprised of Alexandra (Sasha) Berson, Grace Chang, Catalina Escobedo, Erin Jones, Shihab Moral, Kristen Kinzler and Vaughn Vial.