“You know, 90% of students quit pulling right before they get the class they want,” said Chancellor Khosla.
Photo by Julia Wong
With Ninth College’s groundbreaking on the horizon, UC San Diego has once again found itself short on funding. In a statement released to UCSD students, Chancellor Khosla stated, “We looked everywhere — seriously, I even checked under my bed. There’s just no more money in the budget to keep up with my raises and the endless construction.” Instead, he was “very happy” to announce UCSD’s new solution to the budget crisis, which he promises will also address one of the biggest complaints students have had in recent years: course enrollment.
Chancellor Khosla explained that “in order to better serve the needs of our expanding university and aid in student wellbeing,” the WebReg course enrollment is to be replaced by the new Get-’cha University Courses system. Starting next quarter, students will be given five free Khosla Coins during enrollment week, and each unit of the digital currency may be spent on the Get-’cha website for one random reward. Upon redemption, students will receive prizes including seats in random courses related to the student’s major, UCSD merchandise, Triton-themed NFTs, or one of a kind “Specialty Super Rare” items. Students who pull a Specialty Super Rare prize will be invited to draw their prize from Khosla’s fedora, where they can win a letter of recommendation from the Chancellor himself, a Spotify follow from UC President Michael Drake, or 1% of the UC Health Director’s yearly salary in Khosla Coins, among other prizes. Students that are unsatisfied with their Get-’cha rewards will still be able to purchase Khosla Coins for $10 each at the new online Triton E-Shop, which will only accept Triton Cash and traveler’s checks.
According to the email, the system was designed to “raise necessary funds for the construction of Ninth through Twelfth College, even the playing field so that freshmen can win their way into hard-to-get courses, and add an element of fun to the often stressful course registration process.” Students have had extremely mixed reactions to the announcement. Third-year student Freto Pléy said, “This would be okay if all the rewards were major courses, but there’s only a one-in-five chance of rolling a seat in a class! I have absolutely terrible luck, so I already know I’m going to be the one guy with seven worthless NFTs of King Triton.” Other students have expressed concerns over receiving multiple seats in the same class as a reward, such as Klee Explod, who said, “I can already see myself C6 R5-ing BILD 4. Whose idea was it to boost the drop rate for seniors?”
However, some students seemed pleased with the new system. Ahab Warbuckets was particularly excited to pull for the Specialty Super Rare items, saying, “I’m really only a dolphin for most of my gacha games, just a few thousand bucks here and there. But for the SSR Get-’cha rewards, I’m going full whale. I heard that one of the rewards is being hand-fed Bistro sushi on President Drake’s mega-yacht.”
In addition to criticism directed towards the randomness of the rewards, there has been widespread outrage about the price of Khosla Coins. Graduate student Homa Staffordshire said, “Khosla Coins are so expensive they make parking on campus look like a good deal!” In response, the University announced plans to make the Get-’cha system more “free-to-play accessible” by allowing students to earn them through a variety of free means, including watching ads under the supervision of a proctor, volunteering at one of the campus construction sites, or selling 3D scans of their body to Amazon, which was recently contracted by the university to handle security and surveillance.
