Thursday, 9 a.m., week eight. A 30-minute-long line awaits you at the bottom of Murphy Hall. When it’s finally your turn, you try to drop off that petition form to finally get rid of that 10 a.m. class you can never quite make it to. You realize too late, though, that you haven’t gotten your professor’s signature.

You can now look forward to being back at Murphy Hall bright and early Friday, 9 a.m., week eight.

Obtaining petitions is a pain at UCLA. Getting ahold of one requires waiting in line, filling out forms requires chasing after professors and submitting those forms requires yet another line.

A petition for a double major, for example, can include going to each department, getting a list of signatures and laying out a class plan. From there, the petition is either accepted or rejected, with the outcome posted on MyUCLA – with a nondescriptive, curt statement if the request was denied.

That’s a pretty personalized interaction with the No. 1 public university in the U.S.

UCLA boasts about its research and national ranking. Yet it cannot seem to figure out how digitize and streamline monotonous administrative work in order to stop eating up everyone’s time. We live in the digital age, and students should be able to schedule appointments online and obtain petitions via MyUCLA in order to save employees at Murphy Hall and the students waiting in line time. Students should be able to respond to petition decisions online, so they do not have to go through the whole process again to file an appeal.

The back-and-forth from Murphy Hall is exhausting and can be time-consuming for many students. Not only is it an annoying process for students to submit a form, but any missing paperwork means they have to fill those forms out, go back to Murphy Hall and wait in line all over again – assuming you don’t have class or other commitments during College Academic Counseling’s hours.

Jennifer Kwok, a fourth-year cognitive science student, said she was forced to stand in line several times because she needed additional forms. And while in line to submit a petition form for exceeding the unit maximum, she was told she also needed to fill out a college degree contract form.

The challenge is that the petition process is a black box of sorts. Students only see what goes in and comes out, not the intermediary process that decides whether a petition is accepted. Students blindly submit their petitions, pleading for the school to grant them another quarter or to retroactively drop a course. They are not explicitly told why their circumstances do not count as “extenuating” – which is required for some petitions to be accepted – or what an extenuating circumstance is, for that matter.

For example, in order to file a petition to receive credit for a non-University of California summer course, Lathem Wojno, a fourth-year applied mathematics and neuroscience student, required approval from the department to which the course pertained.

Wojno had to jump through many hoops to even petition UCLA to give him credit. He was then sent back-and-forth between three departments in order to see if the course would satisfy degree requirements and transfer to his transcript.

“There is no way for me to plan counseling into my schedule, for me to get my questions answered and problems solved,” Wojno said.

This kind of system is antiquated and discouraging. A student’s transcript can matter immensely, especially if they are applying to programs like medical schools. Being able to retake a class or needing extra time to complete major requirements can be essential. It’s critical UCLA offer a transparent and accessible petition process given these realities.

Giving step-by-step explanations online of the process for each petition and what paperwork is necessary would further streamline the process for students. It would allow them to go down to Murphy Hall to meet with an administrator, and walk away confident that they have all their paperwork complete.

Bill Gordon, director of CAC, said that the process for petitions is standardized, and the department’s main concern is to make the process fair for students. He added petitions are reviewed by a committee of advisors from different departments, and that petitions must be scrutinized.

“Exemptions are exceptions to rules. We need to know exactly what the extenuating circumstances are and we need a full explanation of why,” Gordon said.

But the College of Letters and Science has more than 20,000 undergraduate students and 12 full-time college academic counselors. The petition process is congested, confusing and chaotic. UCLA can cater to students’ needs with an online system while still maintaining its petition standards.

Students should be able to take charge of their academic careers, and UCLA should support them in those endeavors. If they require a petition to achieve that, the university should grant them an audience, not force them to run around campus to fill out paperwork.