Cougar Chronicle Editors

With fall 2013 class registrations coming up, you can’t help but wonder if you are going to make it to graduation in the four years expected. Our editors weigh in on the idea of being a ‘super senior,’ something almost everyone thinks of when they think of graduating. Scary, I know right, but once you have read the comments from our editors you may have a different perspective.

“Unit caps are not beneficial to anyone but the school. For students that are trying to graduate in four years, they are some of the biggest obstacles to overcome. While it is understandable that colleges want to keep us in school for as long as possible so that they can keep making money off of our tuition, preventing us from registering for the amount of classes we want is a frustration. We are in school to learn, earn our degree, and then move on to the next phase of our lives. This is harder to do when classes suddenly become difficult to register for. We should be the ones determining what is an acceptable workload, not the school.” – Features Editor Katie Sweeney

“Being a super senior scares me to my very core. It’s inevitable that that will be my future in a couple of years. Even though I’m only a second year, I need to focus on scholarships and student loans, which I have been thankful not to worry about until now. The unit caps makes things so much worse. At this point, I don’t know when I’m going to graduate.” – A & E Editor Juliana Stumpp

“I think our campus is heavily impacted through multiple majors. It’s unfortunate that the instructor-student ratio is pretty ridiculous for our campus, especially since not all classes are offered each semester, so students have to put off graduation until they can get into their required class. I think CSUSM is a five-year minimum campus unless students choose a major that isn’t impacted and for CSUSM, that isn’t many. I don’t feel like the goal for CSUSM administration is to get students out of here in four years and we lack the resources available to do so. Instead of avoiding this problem in the first place, CSUSM administration makes it seem as if the students are responsible for fixing administration mistakes by charging more fees, making it even more impossible to graduate on time.” – News Editor Melissa Martinez

“I believe the unit cap is absolutely playing a part in the creation of the ‘super senior’ on campus because a limit on units leads to more years to reach the amount needed to graduate and it also prevents us from taking all the necessary classes to graduate. This causes us to take a class the following semester, which we could have taken the previous year if the limit had not been in effect.” – Sports Editor Alex Franco

“I feel that the unit caps have a big role in the amount of ‘super seniors’ we have on our campus. I know that unless you work extremely hard during the semester taking as many classes at as many places as you can find to make it work or taking classes throughout your well deserved summer break; chances are, you will join the class of ‘super seniors’. Now, the unit caps. Our school is working on making the unit caps not to be permanent, they are lifting them now around the time that the classes start, but there is a problem in that statement, you can’t get into any classes when it is time for the actual classes to start. We’re stuck in a real pickle, but I guess this is preparing us for the real, ‘unfair’ world.” – Opinion Editor Jessie Gambrell