The hot topic of debate around COM recently has centered on a one-credit freshman course that doesn’t count toward graduation. 

COM 102, a sequel to the mandatory COM 101, is a required class for all first-semester freshmen.  The class meets every Tuesday from 4 to 5 p.m.  Every week, guest speakers from various departments of BU, from the Community Service Center to Student Health Services, talk to students about what resources are available to them. 

It’s an extension of summer orientation.  Is it really necessary?  Or is it simply a waste of everyone’s time?

I can understand both sides of the argument.  On one side, you have administrators saying that previous classes asked for a course like COM 102, and that the information is valuable.  On the other side, however, many freshmen say it’s an inconvenience — a waste of their time. 

It would be wrong to consider the class a complete waste of time, though.  I’ve talked to freshmen who say they’ve learned valuable information in it.   The impetus for the course — and this fall is the first time students have been forced to take the class — was that students seemed to need more help discovering all the resources available to them at such a large university.  With 18,000 undergraduates, BU is inevitably overwhelming at the beginning.  The intent of the course if well-founded.

However, some students feel like the school is holding their hands.  The Daily Free Press headlined its editorial on the course “Mom 102.” To many, this is spot-on.  How far does the school have to go to make sure freshmen acclimate to college and BU?  What happened to sink or swim?  Darwin would be pissed.  Survival of the fittest, baby. 

But students who attend the course don’t even benefit as much as they could because some of their classmates talk over the speakers and appear less mature than an eighth graders. 

A major problem is how COM introduced the course to the freshmen.  Instead of telling them from the get-go that COM 102 was a required course, just like COM 101 is, they surprised freshmen by adding it to their schedule mid-summer after many had already registered for fall classes.  If they thought all along that COM 102 was a required part of the curriculum, then students would be less likely to complain and act rudely during meeting times.

Even with this course in place, some freshmen still don’t know where to get information when they need it.  If you’re a student and you want to find information these days, you get onto Wikipedia or Google.  If you want to know about, oh let’s say, pseudocandona aemonae, Wikipedia will tell you that it is a species of crustacean in the family Cypridadae.  If you want to know what services Student Health provides and when it’s open, www.bu.edu will tell you.  It’s simple, really, and this generation is more capable of using these resources than those that came before it. 

What administrators worry about, however, is that this generation has been pampered by their parents.  Self-esteem was numero uno priority growing up, and some of the pampered ones struggle to function on their own.  Helicopter parents call professors and advisers to intervene instead of encouraging their sons and daughters to act responsibly.

So what do you think?  Should COM require freshmen to sit through COM 102 when students say it serves as more of an inconvenience than a benefit?  Or do freshmen need to grow up and act like mature college students while in the class so that they will reap benefits from it?

Ready.  Set.  Post your comments.