As a student at James Madison University, I find it unfair and frustrating that certain introductory courses are restricted to declared majors. For example, all art classes at JMU are restricted to declared art, graphic design (and related subjects) students. Beginner keyboard skills courses are also reserved for music majors. This seems counter intuitive to JMU's overarching goal to expose students, particularly freshmen, to new subjects and fields of interests they know nothing about through their General Education program. Personally, I feel somewhat cheated that I am paying thousands of dollars in tuition money to be told that I can't take a simple introductory art class without first declaring an Art major.

The counter-argument to this problem is that there are limited resources and faculty to accommodate students outside the art department who wish to take art classes. My qualms with this reasoning is that while James Madison University is a public college (that doesn't benefit from private funding that private universities do) as a student I believe that I deserve the opportunity to explore introductory classes freely.

At JMU, we are required to take roughly 41 credits worth of GenEds. As far as public liberal arts colleges, this is a staggeringly large amount of general education requirements. While I think GenEds are ultimately a good idea as it allows students that are still uncertain to explore their options, the restriction of which GenEds are allowed also irritates me.

At JMU, there are five clusters, and within each cluster, there are individual sections. To fulfill the GenEd requirements, a student must take a course within each section of each cluster. Some clusters have 2 sections while others have 3. I see no reason why JMU shouldn't be able to include an introduction to drawing or an introduction to keyboard course in their GenEd program. These hands-on classes sound much more fun and engaging than a lot of the classes listed in JMU's GenEd curriculum.

Another issue with the major restricted classes is it deters a lot of students from wanting to explore other areas of interest. For example, to take even one introductory criminal justice course, a student must declare a Criminal Justice Minor (I know because I've tried to enroll in one). I see this as both unnecessary and ultimately discouraging to the concept of learning and exploration.

I feel strongly that a student shouldn't have to declare a minor to be able to take an introductory course. I realize that there are plenty of elective courses available to students, but I don't see why an introduction to criminal justice couldn't be included as one (without the obvious requirement).

I realize this is my opinion and that there are a lot of outside factors that I haven't taken into consideration. JMU's student body is growing bigger each year, which inevitably means that class sizes are getting larger as well as the number of people applying to majors. Teachers and resources become limited or taxed as more students enroll in classes. These are most likely contributing factors to the restrictions on certain classes. Nevertheless, I still think introductory classes should not be restricted at the very least.