Courses dropped by departments within the College of Letters and Science at the University of Wisconsin will soon be available for students to review online or through e-mails.

Representatives from UW’s student government, the Associated Students of Madison, sat down with L&S dean Phil Certain to devise a way to notify students of classes that will no longer be offered through the college’s timetables.

Ashok Kumar, UW freshman and ASM representative also revealed that UW provost Peter Spear invited student representation to sit at the table when the numerous UW colleges and schools decide where future budget cuts will be allocated.

“I don’t see how we could see … shared governance other than this,” Kumar said at a press conference.

Kumar briefly described the way UW decides where budget cuts go to at the meeting. He said the different heads of the colleges and schools all meet to direct the allocations — the meeting where students were invited. After that, inter-college and interdepartmental reductions in funding take place.

All of the UW departments had to take a 364 overall class reduction this fall semester compared to the fall semester of 2002 due to the state’s budget crisis, which pitted Wisconsin into a more than $3 billion deficit.

Kumar said he believes that, as students of this university, all undergraduates should know the classes no longer available to them.

“We pay tuition; I [think we] should be allowed to see what classes are offered,” Kumar said.

Currently, only L&S has committed to alerting students majoring in the program about what is available and what is not, although Kumar said ASM would continue working to have all colleges and departments list the dropped courses.

“It’s a stepping stone … we will be following up [with other departments].”

Kumar said L&S, which graduates more students than any other college within UW, would have its departments post their respective dropped courses on their websites. Kumar continued to say the departments should and would e-mail declared majors the newly absent courses.

As of now, most or all departments have not posted closed classes due to the budget cuts. Though the course list is not online yet, ASM Student Council chair Austin Evans petitioned through an open-records request to have the release of all the dropped classes.

Though this might make the class cuts more evident to students, an ASM release stated the body’s commitment to “fighting these future cuts as well as making sure students are involved in all decisions affecting their education.”

UW junior and history major Alex Horowitz said she might not hone the resources of an online dropped-course listing because she believes the history department offers such a variety of classes to choose from.

“Information is only as useful as what you do with it,” Horowitz said.

However, Horowitz discovered that a Scandinavian literature class she suggested her friends take was cut and showed interest because she did not know of its cutting.

“It couldn’t hurt,” Horowitz said.