re: Hester stirring the pot regarding John Emery Jr.

quote:

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The guy is a sophomore majoring in interdisciplinary studies, right? What exactly are "required" classes at this stage? Did he fail to take a required freshman class or remedial class?

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Interdisciplinary/gen studies degrees have core requirements. In the past, gen studies required 3 minors (instead of a major), and each minor has its own set of requirements. For some departments, the list and sequence of requirements can be very particular and sometimes vague. The only way to know what to do is to be advised or to study each minor’s section in the general catalogue and then do your own self-audit without making any mistakes.

Think about it: Do you think interdisciplinary studies just gives students carte blanche to take a bunch of random, disparate, unrelated classes? There has to be a degree plan.

And the reason the school cannot confirm or deny anything about academics is because of the Family Educational Rights & Privacy Act (FERPA), which is an act of Congress that makes it illegal for a school employee to disclose any information that is not deemed “public.” Believe it or not, one driving reason behind FERPA is to prevent some of the huge number of past stalking issues — creep show stalkers, significant others, and even estranged family members used to do social engineering to figure out where their target would be at a given time (at a class or dorm) so they could confront/intercept the student there.