Ben Lowenthal Farewell Celebration, June 19

Now that I have graduated I have no issues sharing this. I did not want to post sooner out of an abundance of caution in case of the small chance my exemption being rescinded and graduation being delayed. I have purposely left out names so don't sue me kay?

I took Spanish 1 in 8th grade, and levels 2-4 in high school. The middle school class was officially a high school level class. This is normal. From what I've seen, very few competitive college bound students in my school district waited until high school to start a foreign language. When I arrived at UMBC for freshman year, I was told by an adviser and the registrar's office that I would still need to take Spanish 201 to graduate. UMBC requires four years of a foreign language in high school in order to not take it in college. The reasoning was that because I took one year of Spanish in middle school, only the 3 years in high school "counted" despite Spanish 1 being a high school level class. If I had done Spanish 1 in 9th grade it would have counted. I was annoyed but was like ok whatever.

I did not want to take Spanish again since it had been so long and I had already taken the equivalent of 201 in high school (honors spanish 4). I emailed the registrar's office again in junior year explaining that I did have 4 years of a foreign language. The email told me to submit a request to re-evaluate my transcript. When I called later, I was told I still had to take it at UMBC. Looking back, I think the person I called was different from the person who emailed me. I wish I had followed up directly with the person who emailed maybe this would have been over sooner.

Nevertheless, I accepted this outcome because I had a met a friend (let's call her "Rachel") who was in a similar situation and had taken high school level Spanish classes in middle school and had completed level 4 in high school, and was also told by her adviser and the registrar's office that she still needed to take Spanish to graduate because it didn't count as four years.

Then senior year was approaching and I was chatting with a friend "Bobby" about this. He sent me a screenshot of his degree audit. He had taken Spanish 1 and 2 in middle school and 3 and 4 in high school and under foreign language it showed that his high school record was enough to meet the requirements. They had counted all 4 years.

By now I had applied for permission to take Excess Credits in order to take Spanish 201 along with my major requirements (since I had changed my major) but I knew I probably wasn't going to get approved so I had planned to take a summer class to make room for Spanish 201 for the following semester.

Knowing about "Bobby's" situation I knew it was possible to get out of taking 201. That summer, I went to the registrar's office in person, instead of emailing or calling. I did not talk about the details of my situation, because I knew I would be framing the conversation for them to say no you have to take it because of the middle school thing. Instead, I said something along the lines of "hey there is a mistake on my audit, I took Spanish 4 in high school I shouldn't have to take 201 to graduate. The student working at the front desk glanced at my high school transcript online, called over someone else to confirm what she was doing was ok, and changed my record right there so that I was exempt from taking 201. That took just a minute. Whoever that student was thank you so much for helping me. You were more competent than the adults who are supposed to be trained to know school policies.
I do want to make clear that not everyone in the registrar's office is a moron. But it was like the answer you get depends on who you talked to. And it's not like I had talked them just once.

I told my friend "Rachel" about all this but by then she had already taken Spanish 201. She was even angrier than I was because she was a STEM student who wasted time in a class she didn't need. She then wrote a long email to her adviser. Her adviser wrote back saying Rachel must be mistaken because middle school Spanish doesn't count even if it is a high school level class, so she had to take it. Keep in mind my friend "Bobby" didn't have to contact anyone to get exempt, as soon as he entered UMBC as a freshman it was already on his record that he did not have to take 201. He had the exact same record as Rachel. Rachel did not think the adviser was lying, but rather had no idea what he was talking about.

The funniest part of this whole thing is a month after it was all over and settled, my former adviser sent me an email, saying she had received my request for excess credits but "spoke with a representative from the Registrar's Office and she looked into my situation and noted the error and corrected it immediately, so I do not need to take excess credits." It was actually ME who spoke with the registrar's office and had it corrected, after years of getting false information from the registrar and her as an adviser. She played NO part in fixing this mess.

If you have friends who are going to be freshmen or who are planning on taking Spanish 201 for the reasons I was supposed to take it for, please let them know about this. No one should have to waste time and money because the stupid administration do not apply rules consistently, and won't even own up to their mistakes. I'm glad to have graduated. Please paw this I want this to be seen by the greatest number of students as possible so that they won't have to go through this.

TL;DR If you took a level 4 foreign language in high school, you do NOT need to take any foreign language classes at UMBC to graduate, regardless of what your advisor says. Keep pushing back if they insist. They are wrong.

EDIT

I want to address a criticism I got. It is a mistake on my part that I didn’t make this clear but there is concern that this post will make the admin more strict. Let me make it clear that I did not get out of required class. I should have never had to take that class according to UMBCs policies and neither should anyone else who is in the same situation.

Here are the foreign language requirements: https://mlli.umbc.edu/l201-proficiency-and-high-school-language-levels/

It says the completion of level 4 in high school (which is what my friends and I all did). Which makes sense, because someone like “Bobby” had finished Spanish 4 in 10th grade. If his audit wasn’t the way it was supposed to be, there would be no foreign language classes left for him to have taken in his senior year of high school, so he would be forced to take Spanish in college for no reason. Spanish 4 is equivalent to 201.

And if UMBC decides to change the policy to "four years of language classes in high school" then they are giving an unfair disadvantage to students who started high school level classes in middle school, which would be ridiculous for a university that calls itself an “honors university”.