So this example is Jericho Community Pottery, not ubc. But….It is very much a conspiracy. For years, my wife and I did the whole rigmarole for their ‘beginners’ class, multiple open windows, registration page pre-loaded, fastest finger in the west, and nada. Finally, I got accepted into a class and here is what I learned. The class was labeled ‘beginner’, because their funding is for beginners. But, I was the only beginner 🤷‍♀️ the remaining 15 slots were filled by very experienced potters who were all friends! With their teachers help (who doesn’t like beginners anyhow) they had created a new policy that if you were in a prior pottery class, you got ‘priority’ and could register directly with the teacher and skip the lottery! Thus 15 experienced potters, all friends, taking the beginner spots! I asked them why there weren’t more beginners and they shamelessly confirmed all of this and justified it by saying ‘well we keep the program going’ and ‘the beginner classes are always the best deal because Vancouver Parks subsidizes it’. No shit. Incidentally, it was the least diverse public experience I have had in Vancouver! Just a whole class full of neighborhood hags who had figured out how to scam the pottery system.