by Wesley Harris
My first quarter registration at Louisiana Tech wasn’t just another day on campus.
It was an event.
Like every new student, I carried what everyone called the “Racing Form,” a thick booklet listing every course, section, instructor, meeting time and classroom. The nickname fit, like a racing form at the horse track outlining the schedule and the participating fillies. Students studied it for days, trying to build the perfect class schedule while knowing it might all fall apart before registration was over.
The process began in an advisor’s office.
Together we reviewed degree requirements and selected courses for the upcoming quarter. Sometimes my advisor’s ideas didn’t exactly match mine. I remember being encouraged — more accurately, he insisted — to take electives I had little interest in, including Small Engines and Genetics. Whether I wanted them or not, once my advisor signed the schedule, that became my roadmap for the day.
Then came the real test.
Students headed to the Student Center, where registration occupied the building’s wide-open main floor. Years before, registration occurred in Memorial Gym. To many generations of Tech students, the Student Center was simply “the Tonk.” Long rows of tables stretched across the floor, each representing an academic department and staffed by faculty members. On the tables sat neat stacks of punch cards, one card for every available seat in every section of every course.
Those little pieces of cardboard were worth their weight in gold.
You couldn’t simply walk up to a table and ask for whichever punch card you wanted. Faculty members required you to present the advisor-approved schedule before they handed over a card. They issued only the punch card for the specific course and section listed on your schedule.
If the punch cards were still there, you moved on to the next department.
If they weren’t … your day suddenly became much longer.
“I remember [registration] was infuriating!” Sheila Bordelon told me. “You get to one place and they would say you have to go back and do this or that.”
There was no electronic display showing which classes were open. No computer screen listing available seats. No master board announcing that a section had filled.
The only way to find out was to walk to the department table and ask.
Every Tech alumnus from that era remembers the same sinking feeling. You stood patiently in line watching the stack of punch cards grow smaller. Then the student immediately in front of you accepted the last card.
“Sorry,” the faculty member would say. “That’s the last one.”
In an instant, the carefully planned schedule you had spent hours assembling was worthless. Back to the advisor.
Albert Brazzel found one quarter so frustrating it took him two days to register.
“My advisor was in Carson Taylor, classes were obtained in Memorial Gym,” Brazzel remembers. “If a class your advisor approved was closed out, you had to go back to your advisor and choose something else. I made that trip across campus over and over for two days one time. I had nightmares about Louisiana Tech registration for years and years.”
A return to the advisor meant revising the schedule, usually substituting another section or another course altogether. But even then there was no guarantee. You had no idea whether those replacement classes still had openings until you walked back into the Tonk, found the appropriate tables and asked all over again.
Sometimes one closed class forced changes to the entire schedule because the replacement conflicted with another course. Students often carried several possible schedules in their heads, hoping one of them would survive the day.
Word traveled quickly across the registration floor.
“History 201’s full.”
“Chemistry 102 on Tuesday-Thursday only has a few cards left.”
“Don’t waste your time going to accounting.”
Students became the unofficial communication system long before text messages and social media.
Eventually, if fortune smiled, you collected a punch card for every class. The cards were turned in to registrar staff, who fed them into the university’s mainframe computer. Those room-sized machines — now relics in museums — processed registrations, produced student schedules and generated class rosters for instructors.
The system was slow by today’s standards, but somehow it worked.
While Tech officials couldn’t control the chaos and anxiety many students felt, the university tried to create a fair process.
Tech alumnus and retired English professor Bruce Magee recalls, “A different letter in the alphabet started first every quarter because when the cards ran out, the section was closed. Also, upperclassmen went ahead of freshmen and sophomores,” aiding the older students in meeting curriculum requirements before anticipated graduation.
Former student Nita Liner MaGee remembers registration was “a little overwhelming but more personal” than today’s online process.
Cynthia Gates Mitcham had a much different experience, one I wish I had encountered.
“I loved registration ’76-78,” Mitcham told me. “My nursing advisors were the best. It was so exciting to see everyone & succeed at growing toward my goal of OR nursing! It was a great chance to spread my wings & fly!”
After I enrolled that first time, I accepted a part-time job in the Office of the Dean of Student Life. For the next two years, I stood at the entrance to the Student Center handing each registering student a copy of Louisiana Tech’s Code of Student Conduct.
Most accepted the booklet without saying a word and continued toward the registration tables.
A few stopped to visit for a minute or two.
Some of those brief conversations became friendships.
At the end of each registration day, I walked through the Student Center collecting dozens of discarded Student Conduct booklets from tables, chairs and windowsills so they could be redistributed to the next wave of students the following morning. I’d be surprised if anyone read one.
Today’s students register with a few clicks and instantly know whether a class is open, closed or has a waiting list. They can rearrange an entire schedule without leaving their dorm room.
Those of us who attended Louisiana Tech during the punch-card era remember something entirely different.
We remember the Racing Form.
We remember actually sitting down with advisors.
We remember walking back and forth across the Tonk.
We remember faculty members guarding stacks of punch cards.
Most of all, we remember the disappointment of watching the student just ahead of us claim the very last card for the class we absolutely had to have.
Registration wasn’t merely an administrative process. For generations of Tech students, it was a rite of passage.
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