When the Office of Registration announced WebReg Permissions last fall, the program was surrounded by a cloud of optimism. No longer would WebReg be a free-for-all, where anyone could register for any class.

Departments would be able to screen out students by majors and minors and could even enter a list of identification numbers of students who could register for a class.

Best of all, the departments that didn’t use WebReg because anyone could sign up for their classes would be able to stop hand registration and come back to WebReg.

But despite the Office of the Registrar’s attempts to market WebReg Permissions to departments, only 18 departments are currently using it, and many departments are still using hand registration for some or all of their courses.

It certainly isn’t because the system isn’t working. Those who have used it have only experienced minimal problems, according to Beth Acree, director of the Office of the Registrar.

“”Departments are pleased. We’ve had minimal problems. Students have been able to go on during their normal registration instead of going to the department the following Monday,”” she said.

Departments that formerly used alternative registration methods have moved entirely online. This includes all majors from the Eller College of Management. The College had previously developed its own online registration system to circumvent WebReg.

Acree thinks the departments that aren’t using Permissions are hesitant to try something new.

These departments need to get with the times and start using Permissions. When students have to sign up for their general education requirements online and then go to their departments at other times, it makes it much harder to plan schedules.

Moreover, it wastes the time of students and advisers alike.

To be sure, in some instances, it may be as much work to enter individual student IDs as to register them by hand. When there are 1,000 people who should be allowed to register, maybe it still makes sense to hand-register for some departments. More improvements to WebReg could be made.

But when departments as diverse as computer science and sociology have made registration much easier for their students, it’s time that other departments follow their lead. WebReg Permissions is off to a decent start, but it still has more potential.