Summer swan song

Deirdre Newman

It might not have been for a share of $120 million, but Orange

Coast College student Emilie Saleh was reveling in her lottery

victory nonetheless Monday.

On the community college’s first day of school, Saleh was randomly

selected in a lottery after she and about 19 other students

petitioned to get into a closed section of astronomy.

Saleh, 18, of Costa Mesa was among many students who waited until

the last minute to add or drop classes -- a feat made monumentally

easier by the enhancement of the school’s touch-tone registration

system in the spring.

The first day of school was expectedly busy as OCC’s fall

enrollment is up by almost 4% compared with last year, said Nancy

Kidder, administrative dean of Admissions and Records.

Many of the 2,500 sections remain open, noted Kidder, who looked

unflappable despite the first day’s hustle and bustle.

For most of the morning and early afternoon hours, a long line

snaked out of the admissions office, around the corner and, luckily

for the procrastinators, into a covered hallway so they could get

some refuge from a sun that was more conducive to a day at the beach

than the first day of school.

And the schedule was even pushed back two weeks from the usual

semester start date in recognition of August as a perennially popular

vacation month. The spring semester will also start later, at the

beginning of February instead of the end of January, to give the

school enough time to complete its intersession classes.

While many students on Monday were doing the traditional add-drop

dance, others, like Saleh, who wanted to get into closed sections,

had to get permission from the instructors first.

“The discretion is with the instructor,” Kidder said. “In some

classes, it’s impossible. In other cases, there’s some latitude.”

After getting an instructor’s permission, students could then use

the touch-tone phones in the admissions office to add the class.

A whopping 94% of students used the touch-tone registration system

to register for their classes for the fall, up 2% from last year,

Kidder said.

The system earns high marks from students, such as Kristen

Behrens, 21, of Garden Grove, who was in the admissions office Monday

afternoon to drop a class that wasn’t quite to her liking.

“My first class was microeconomics -- I thought it was something

different,” Behrens said. “So I’m trying to add something like

anthropology or history, just not math.”

Many students shuddered when they saw the long line outside the

admissions office, including Victor Delligatti, 37, of Santa Ana.

“I haven’t seen this long a line since the last time I tried to

get concert tickets,” Delligatti said. “I was going to go home and

wait a few hours, but thought if the line is this long now, it would

be just as long later.”

Delligatti said he came to campus to add a class he couldn’t find

in the course catalog.

The school is expected to enroll about 29,000 students by the end

of the semester, Kidder said.

* DEIRDRE NEWMAN covers education. She may be reached at (949)

574-4221 or by e-mail at deirdre.newman@latimes.com.