It looks like long lines at late registration will be a reality until the summer of 1992 at NIU.

Because a proposed phone registration system is not yet in place, summer school students struggled to fill their schedules Monday in the Duke Ellington Ballroom of the Holmes Student Center.

“I need to get in one more class so I can graduate on time, and I can’t even pick up one more class in my major,” said Donna Denardo, a senior majoring in corporate communications.

But by the spring of 1992, off-campus students should be able to register by phone using a computer system.

If all goes well with the testing of a prototype of the system, students could use the touch-tone process for late registration next summer, said Don Larson, associate director of Registration and Records.

The phone system will only replace late registration, while the mail-in registration process will remain, said Richard Durfee, director of Registration and Records.

“It’s an open discussion whether to change mail-in registration or not, and that will be up to department heads and the provost. Mail-in registration allows professors to look at demand for classes while a phone system does not,” Durfee said.

If a touch-tone computer system is adopted for mail-in registration, it would take several years until it would be available for students’ use.

Until then, long lines and short tempers will continue to fill the Holmes Student Center.

“What happens years from now will not affect me. All I know is I spent all day waiting in line,” said Ron Wojkowski, a junior majoring in computer science.

Senior Holly Odean said, “I have been waiting in line for a class I have been closed out of two times, and I’m a senior.”