Despite snowstorms, sprained ankles, frostbite, and sweaty scrambles for that perfect schedule, many Badgers remember registration day fondly. UW Archives S00160

In 2021, a sleepy student shuts off the alarm, rolls over in bed, clicks “Enroll” on a virtual cart of courses, and dozes off again. Somewhere in the distance, a seasoned alum scoffs — these kids don’t know how easy they have it.

If there’s one student experience that distinguishes modern Badgers from their predecessors, it’s class registration. Today, students enroll with the ease of an online shopping spree; a generation ago, they latched themselves to landlines and relied on touch-tone dialing to secure their spots in their required courses. And before that, students woke early, laced up their running shoes, and devised elaborate plans for the mad dash across campus for in-person registration, an experience that these hardened veterans wear as a badge of honor.

Many memories of in-person class registration start in the Stock Pavilion, where crowds of students trampled straw-covered floors to pick up paperwork before being set loose to fill their schedules.

“The moment of pure culture shock was being immersed in the collective ‘MOOOOOOOOO’ that erupted from the students as we were released from the building en masse,” says Mary Jane Carlson Thurau ’90, a transfer student from California, about her first registration experience.

Some students had the process down to a science, orchestrating maneuvers that included cross-campus tag teams and walkie-talkies. Others sprinted frantically between buildings as even the best-laid plans were foiled while classes filled.

“After a harrowing and exhausting couple of hours, the survivors would straggle back to the dorms and collapse in the common area,” Tyler Schultz ’92 recalls. “We compared our battle stories and how many dreaded waitlist classes we each got.”

Despite days marred by snowstorms, sprained ankles, frostbite, sweaty scrambles for that perfect schedule, and the heartbreak of settling for a 7:30 a.m. lecture, many Badgers still remember registration day fondly.

“To tell the truth, I wouldn’t give up the experience for anything,” Renée Aronov Miller ’62 says. “The students today probably don’t have our staying ability, or the ‘stick-to-itiveness’ that we had. Everything seems easier unless the Wi-Fi goes down!”

As a result, the Female College, located in South Hall, opened in 1867 with its own headmistress and curriculum. The innovation was not popular with its students. Jennie Field Bashford 1874 wrote, “The feminine mind was kept in a constant state of irritation by the subordinate position assigned to it at the University.”

Jennie Muzzy Covert 1872, writing in the March 1901 Wisconsin Alumni Magazine, noted, “When I entered, the experimental policy of a ‘ladies’ department’ had given rise to a most anomalous and unsatisfactory condition of affairs. … The young women were coming, craving opportunities for growth and mental development, and finding the restrictions imposed upon them more and more irksome and galling. This feeling of turbulent unrest and dissatisfaction reached its zenith … in 1870 and 1871, and particularly through the senior girls of the class of ’70. A quartette of forceful, brainy, spirited young women, they were pronounced leaders in denouncing offensive rules and regulations, in scheming to obtain larger liberties, and in general mutinous conduct.”

With Chadbourne’s departure in 1871, the university soon reaffirmed its commitment to coeducation, partly because it was inefficient to maintain two separate colleges. The newly constructed Ladies Hall (shown above) served as the women’s dormitory, but they were once again allowed to attend classes with men. Ladies Hall was later named Chadbourne Hall by acting president Edward Birge to commemorate “Dr. Chadbourne’s contumacy regarding coeducation.”