<p>You could very well be correct that I’m trivializing it. One or two years from now, sitting in your place, I may see the light and wish I could take back these words. I recognize that that’s a distinct possibility.</p>
<p>I think the problem is that there are these courses out there and they make it to the course catalogue and someone gets their hopes up…only to have them be told to find another course. Then there are all the courses that aren’t even in the catalogue. Perhaps due to the professor being on sabbatical. Perhaps due to a lack of resources or funding. Nobody notices those. There’s no sense that a door has been shut when it’s just a wall.</p>
<p>Nobody’s complaining about the inability to use the wind tunnel that doesn’t exist and nobody else gets to use. The outrage here seems to be fueled by (a) the knowledge that something was at some point offered; (b) there’s a possibility of taking that particular path; and (c) the knowledge that some people – other people – are able to pursue that particular path.</p>
<p>Ideally, this would never happen. But it does. And while I may be trivializing it, I think others are overstating it. As I understand it, this happens only now and then and not across-the-board and across all disciplines. It’s classic YMMV. The fact that in some areas there are student limits and other barriers-to-entry doesn’t mean that that’s true for all academic disciplines. It’s certainly not true to the point where the instances in which this problem does exist are so numerous that – as claimed here – students are foreclosed from the wide variety of options that a liberal arts college offers. Maybe I should have more empathy for those who get shut out of a particular academic track they hope to explore…but let’s acknowledge the fact that myriad tracks remain fully available to that student. They may be denied a class; but they’re not denied access to a full liberal arts education.</p>
<p>Again, this is the “glass with one sip removed/glass full” scenario. I’m probably trivializing the fact that a couple of lower-level courses get closed because I still see the glass as being full. My disconnect is when others see a sip or two taken from that glass and characterize it as “half empty” (if that).</p>