For the second semester in a row New College students have broken their own record: 96.7 percent of students turned their contracts in on time. The remaining 3.3 percent will be subjected to a $100 fine.

Last semester a similar number of contracts were turned in by the deadline, however, before this year, the registrar had never received more than 80 percent on time.

“I’ve heard horror stories of 45 percent from a few years ago,” Acting Registrar Marta Moreno said.

Moreno credited the recent increase to the new tone the Registrar’s Office is taking in its communication with students.

“The communication from the office has changed,” Moreno said. “We’re less preachy and more open and friendly and service-oriented.”

“I also like to think that our fun pictures we send out have helped,” she continued, referring to the emails students receive from the registrar, which are usually accompanied by a picture of Patrick from SpongeBob.

The contract deadline is important because the registrar must manually input each student’s contract information into the system. Moreno has managed to streamline the process of inputting all that data, and has brought the time from the contract deadline to input completion from six weeks to one.

“Everything else stops,” Moreno said. “I took a pile home and worked on them over the weekend.”

Students who fail to turn in their contract after the late deadline are assumed to not be returning, and are administratively withdrawn. Once this happens a student must petition to the Provost for the registrar to accept their contract and to be re-registered.