Southeast's telephone registration ending

Southeast Missouri State University will hang up its telephone registration system this summer, canceling it in favor of online registration that has become popular with computer-savvy students.

But some students say the school's action will make it harder to register for classes, particularly for commuter students who don't have computers or easy access to the Internet.

"I just look at it as being more of a hassle," said student Keith Benton, 21. He and a roommate rent a house in Cape Girardeau. They don't have a computer.

School officials say the SAVRS (Southeast Missouri State Automated Voice Response System) will be shut down permanently on June 30 because of declining use by students and as an effort to save money. The automated phone system has been in use since November 1993.

Sandy Hinkle, university registrar, said eliminating the automated phone registration system will save the school about $20,000 a year.

Students currently are registering for fall semester classes with most doing so by computer through the Internet on Southeast's Web site.

Last semester, SAVRS handled only 2,000 registration phone calls. Hinkle said some students ended up registering for classes via several phone calls so less than 2,000 of the university's more than 9,300 students registered for class via touch-tone phones.

Hinkle said seniors are the biggest users of the phone registration system. Once those seniors graduate in May, phone registrations will decline even more, she said.

Most students, she said, have access to computers either at home or in campus labs. The registrar's office also has several computer terminals that students can use to register for classes.

Registration under way

Registration for fall semester classes began Monday. A computer glitch periodically shut down the online registration system on Monday, but the problem was corrected by that afternoon, Hinkle said.

Ross McFerron, a sophomore from Advance, Mo., has registered online since the computer system was established a year and a half ago.

"I started using the Internet just because it is faster and easier," he said. Students don't have to worry about busy signals.

With only 20 phone lines for SAVRS, the phone lines often are jammed during registration periods.

"It was a 20-minute wait to register for spring classes," said Erin Hamm, who registered for this semester's classes last November. Students can register via telephone or online from 4 a.m. to 7 p.m. during registration periods.

Hamm, a senior from New Hamburg, Mo., said she started calling SAVRS at 3:45 a.m. on the first day she could register. "I started calling 15 minutes before it opened," she said.

A public relations major, Hamm said she wanted to make sure she enrolled in the classes she needed to graduate this spring. Some of the public relations classes were in great demand.

"It is just a matter of who got up early got to graduate in May," she said.

mbliss@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 123