Outdated Out of Towns
Currently, Exeter requires students to complete Out of Town forms to leave campus. The process begins by students walking over to Jeremiah Smith Hall to pick up the Out of Town Forms, located on the second floor of the building. After students complete their forms, they are required to find a dorm faculty member to sign their paper, and return the slip back to Jeremiah Smith Hall to submit their forms. The forms then are approved and typed into an online system by a faculty member. Not only that, parents or guardians of the students are required to submit a form online to approve the students to be out of town. Although the current system makes sure that everyone is informed about the whereabouts of students, it is a tedious process that can easily be made simpler.
Before Out of Town forms are officially submitted, the paper goes through the hands of the student applying for it, that student’s dorm faculty, and the faculty at Jeremiah Smith Hall. During the process, even the smallest mistake can lead to the loss of the paper; and yet it is nearly impossible to hard to find the paper due to the numerous number of places it can be at. Not only that, if the paper gets lost after the student submits it, there is no way for them to know that along the way something went wrong. Thus, it is only after the deadline that the student is alerted to their lost paper.
In addition, even prior to the process of completing them, simply acquiring the OOT forms from Jeremiah Smith Hall can be tedious. For students, especially those who live on the South Side of campus, walking across campus just to pick up a piece of paper seems to be nonsensical. Whether it slips from their minds as a result of the perpetually packed schedule of most Exonians, or there simply isn’t an optimal slot of time between their required appointments, it can be difficult even for residents of North Side to get to J. Smith. But currently, in dorms that don’t have or allow forms to be kept in their respective common rooms, there is no alternative. This is especially an issue when Exonians make last-minute plans to leave town.
Another potential conflict with last-minute plans and the OOT process is the required faculty signature. Sometimes, a student will need a form to be filled immediately but there is no faculty member available to fill the form they need to deposit at J. Smith by noon.
Lastly, the current OOT system poses a threat to the environment, as the sheets of paper used is wasteful. Whether it is unused OOTs sitting in a forgotten box in a common room or an imperfect student signature prompting a restart on a fresh OOT, the number of wasted OOTs is an easily avoidable issue.
With an electronic system, such as Google Forms or another survey-like program, all three of these issues with the OOT form would be resolved. Students wouldn't need to schedule a trip to J Smith into their lives because they would be able to fill it out in their own rooms on their laptops. Faculty signatures would be acquired just like parental permissions is acquired: electronically. This prevents a long search for faculty using time Exonians don’t have. This electronic method also saves paper. It also saves time, as administrative faculty in J Smith have to manually transfer the information on the blue sheets onto an electronic platform.