Obviously, the current system has too many loopholes that crafty Lowell students often exploit along with myriad inefficiencies that create impractical or incomplete schedules.

Some students regularly camp out near certain class strips in the arena, waiting for someone to drop so that they might swoop in and take the spot. Others take advantage of good standing with counselors to simply be added into their desired classes or allowed to enter the arena hours before their scheduled time.

In addition, the element of student participation in the arena’s operation, i.e. Shield and Scroll, creates many conflicts of interest. This spring, several Shield and Scroll members were caught allowing their friends to schedule early in spite of the inequalities it causes for the rest of the student body. What’s more, this likely was not the first time Shield and Scroll members have taken advantage of their positions in administrating self-scheduling.

Gossip that favors one teacher over another because he is reportedly an “easy A” or particularly entertaining contributes to unbalanced classes, in which one section may include 10 students and another 30. For qualified and capable teachers making a genuine effort, these imbalances can be a crushing and unnecessary blow to confidence and an unfair assessment of their ability. For others, the imbalances create a unfair number of students to teach.

The truly egregious faults of the arena system, however, lie in the corruption that pervades it. Counselors granting favors to certain students and giving them all of their desired classes, regardless of arena priority, create inequalities far worse than simply handing out green sheets early. These counselors undermine any attempt at fairness in scheduling, and willingly grant one student a desirable schedule at the expense of other students’ schedules as well as teachers’ class sizes.

However, the arena system has innate advantages, most notably encouraging students to be responsible for their own schedules and academics. Planning our own classes prepares us for college, where we will be completely responsible for our own time management. Taking charge right now accustoms us to the responsibility of looking after ourselves, rather than having someone else take care of us.

On more practical level, self-scheduling gives the task of planning out schedules to the people who know best their own compatibilities with certain teachers and class times. If a student knows that he performs better academically with a schedule starting at 8:30 a.m., self-scheduling gives that student that option.

The most convincing advantage of self-scheduling is the way it differentiates Lowell from other schools. Giving students the power to decide their own schedules implies that Lowell students are trustworthy, intelligent and responsible enough to use that power wisely. Whether or not that implication holds true one hundred percent of the time, it is a shame that counselors and others in charge of the system are not subject to the same expectations.