Day 43 - Illiteracy at SFSU

Image by Joey Yen, via Flickr

Before I enrolled at SFSU, I received a package from the registrar's office with a list of what I needed to bring with me on the day of registration. Among other things was the result of a chest X-ray not more than 6 months old. Since I hadn't had a chest X-ray in several years and I received the letter in Minnesota, I had to schedule one before Cathy and I left for California.

I made an appointment at the Fargo Clinic where I had been a patient as a child. When they finally called my name, they told me I needed a doctor's order to get a chest X-ray. I showed them the letter from the SFSU registrar that said I would not be allowed to register unless I had the report on a recent chest X-ray. I didn't have enough time to schedule a doctor's visit. They relented and for about $80, I got my X-ray.

When I arrived to register, I saw a sign that directed those who didn't have chest X-ray results to join the line to the left while those with results were directed to the line at the right. What was the first stop for the line on the left? A free chest X-ray. So much for not being allowed to register.

Chest X-ray image by upton, via Flickr

The letter from the registrar also spelled out the order of priority for registering for classes, depending on one's major, minor, and years remaining to complete a degree. Seniors, for example, had priority for classes in their major because they were in their final year and this was the final opportunity to complete all their required classes. For graduate students, the course of study was the most important. From 8 am to noon, for example, I had priority to register for English classes. After noon, I could try to line up classes in other disciplines.

So I headed to the line for graduate level English classes. The woman ahead of me introduced herself. Lynn ended up in many of my classes and eventually became my roommate beginning the fall semester after my summer in Minnesota translating for a Bolivian missionary.

Once I had signed up for a number of English courses, I headed for the Psychology Department. There I discovered the rules were quite different. The doors to the registration hall were closed, with a teaching assistant blocking the way to prevent everyone from entering.  Every half hour, someone came out and taped sheets of paper with two or three letters on them to the outside wall. Those whose last names began with one of those letters would then be allowed into the registration hall. It didn't matter what the person's major was, or how close he or she was to completing a degree.

I needed a psychology class to meet the requirements of the masters program. I didn't need a specific psychology class, just one of a range would do. But by the time the W went up on the wall outside the registration hall, none of the courses that would meet the requirement were available. With a last name that began with W, I was used to being among the last called on, but that wasn't an excuse this time. I had to admit that W didn't go up toward the end of the day because of its alphabetical position. The letters were being drawn from a hat to ensure their order was entirely random. But that random order had absolutely nothing to do with the instructions in my letter from the registrar.

Image by dougbelshaw, via Flickr

A few years later, when I was teaching at Southern Illinois University, a cartoon in the local paper showed two boys walking across the campus where a sign said "Wipe out illiteracy." One boy asks the other what the sign says. The other responds, "I think it says 'Keep off the grass.'"

My first thought on seeing that cartoon was of my registration experience in San Francisco where what was written wasn't followed so it was little wonder that students didn't bother reading. But maybe what the university was looking for was bureaucracy literacy, not reading literacy.