Over 1,000 students enrolled in 60 Wintercession courses

More than 1,000students enrolled in over 60 courses during the 2015 Wintersession program, but participation may have been affected by the University closing on the Tuesday of the Intersession break due to inclement weather.

Wintersession classes are personal enrichment classes offered by the Undergraduate Student Government at the end of January.

“I think that participation rates were affected on Tuesday when there was a good amount of snow on campus," former USG president Shawon Jackson '15 said. "Both the instructors and students were being cautious so some courses were canceled or postponed."

Joe Rummaneethorn ’18 said that attendance was low at one of his classes in light of the weather conditions.

"There’s a class I signed up for and there was supposed to be 100 people who showed up," Rummaneethorn said."Only, like, 20 showed up. It was pretty rough that day."

U-councilor Katherine Clifton ’15, the project manager who helped to found the program last year, said that two-thirds of participants signed up for more than one course. She added that the most popular courses were "Getting Started With Excel," "BodyHype Dance Workshops" and "Parkour and Freerunning," among others.

"I think Wintersession this year and especially in the past year has been wildly successful for a couple of reasons," U-councilor Jacob Cannon '17, a Wintersession project member, said. "I think everyone on this campus, no matter what background you come from, is interested in learning and passionate about so many different things. This place becomes so fast-paced sometimes that you forget to really invest in having relationships with others about exchanging passions and ideas.”

Hunter Dong ’17, who led “Wallstreet 101” on the Tuesday when the University remained closed, said he wished there was a way to enforce attendance at the courses.

Last year, USG estimated that 30 percent of students who signed up for courses did not participate at all.

This year, Clifton said, they added 30 percent to enrollment capacity of each class to accommodate enrollment and participation discrepancies.She added that USG is looking to find new ways to monitor and enforce enrollment.

“One thing that was proposed was having students putting down some sort of fee at the beginning,” Clifton said,adding that she felt students should not feel a financial burden to participate in Wintersession.

“In the future, I hope that Wintersession can become an institutionalized program," Jackson said. "It will be great for a particular University office to take on the development and execution of Wintersession so that it's truly part of the Princeton culture."

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Clifton said USG wouldn't have the means on its own to handle an expanded Wintersession, such as if the program became two or three weeks in length.

“I still would like USG to be very much involved, but it would nice if there was a little more oversight if it were to expand,” she said. "[Wintersession] brings together undergraduate and graduate students, students and faculty … It’s really incredible that there is this one thing that brings us all together for one week, and I just think that the more students involved, the more faculty, the more community members, the better."

Correction: Due to a reporting error, an earlier version of this article misstated the number of participants that signed up for more than one Wintersession course. Two-thirds of participants signed up for more than one course. The 'Prince' regrets the error.