Jennifer Brown Beasley (’84) – I moved into Cresswell in fall 1980 to begin my education at MSU. My parents drove me up from Hattiesburg which was about a three-and-a-half-hour drive back then on mostly two-lane roads. They helped me lug all my dorm furnishings in, make up the bed and decorate my shelves. I had packed some clothes in an old Samsonite suitcase so when done, they took the big suitcase back to Hattiesburg since I had no room to store it. About 4 p.m. I started looking for my registration papers that had come in the mail, the ones I needed to have at registration the next day. It didn’t take long to realize they were in the little netting part of cardboard divider of the suitcase—which had gone back to Hattiesburg! I used the 1-800 calling card we had to use for long distance calling and my dad, Charles Brown, class of 1960 and 1979 alumni president, turned around and drove all the way back to Starkville to hand me my papers, get a goodbye hug and drive back to Hattiesburg that night. Fourteen hours of car time total for him to save his freshman from a late registration!
William D. Burgess (’62) – In the fall of 1958 there weren’t long lines of students seeking perfect schedules—there were only a few students. I was feeling my way through the few options available for some 18 required hours.
Classes began at 7 a.m. and also were held on Saturday morning. I had the good luck to get classes at 7 a.m., six days a week. I thought that was bad until the next semester, when I managed to have only five days of 7 a.m. classes—all in one course on the top floor of Lee Hall. Same professor each morning speaking in a monotone. I also had the good fortune to have 11 a.m. class on Saturday. The good news is that, since the course was two former math department courses combined, I was only required to have 17 hours.
I might mention that I lived in Old Main when it burned in January 1959.
Bobbie Hinman (’69) – I well remember the ordeal of registration, not in the Hump but the Cow Barn. There were small square tables scattered in a circle. We went from table to table to register for each individual class. If you had a conflict you had to go back to rearrange schedules. No computers at all. Afterwards we went to Lee Hall for more lines to pay our fees. This was 1964-69.
Bill Martin (’71) – The picture of Humphrey Coliseum looks just like my first day at class registration in fall 1967. As I recall, we were told this was the first time MSU was using a computer in the registration process. There were stations for the various classes being offered.
Each student had to obtain an IBM punch card for each class, making sure they did not collect cards for different classes that were scheduled for the same days and time. If you got to the station for a desired class, only to learn the class was full, you had to choose a class scheduled for a different time. If that time conflicted with a class card you had earlier collected, you had to return to the previous station and swap the earlier collected card for a class that did not conflict. Once you had all your cards, you stopped at a final station where the cards were reviewed to make sure there were no conflicting times. If there were no conflicts, the cards were left with that station for processing through MSU’s computer mainframe. This was before we had personal computers.
