It's been over six months since Brown Against Banner - the Facebook group that quickly gained over 750 members and represented the first flood of student criticism of the new online registration system - was created, and we can now all breathe a sigh of relief.
Like the turn of the 21st century, Brown's move to Banner was a tale of doom-sayers predicting technological collapse. And like the skeptics of nearly a decade ago, shopping period has come and gone - like Y2K - mostly snag-free, mostly peacefully.
When the clock struck 5 p.m. on Tuesday and the first online registration period in Brown's history drew to a close, University Hall was still standing. Brown was still here and the New Curriculum was still around, though PS11 wasn't - oh wait. It's now called POLS 0110.
To be sure, Banner isn't perfect. The user interface is unfathomably frustrating. Confusion among students and professors is rampant. Faculty training may have been insufficient, and we're still not sure what exactly our Banner numbers are.
The many convoluted snags - including five minute time-outs or the necessary demands on professors for lengthy override processes - are certainly annoying and seemingly avoidable. It's unclear whether some students - especially freshmen - were unfairly shut out of capped courses, and how these caps will be determined in the future is uncertain.
But let's face it. In 2007, it's about time Brown has online registration. As then-Provost Robert Zimmer said two years ago, "It is not appropriate that an institution like Brown doesn't have online registration in 2005." When you can apply to college, buy stock, pay your cell phone bill, get a date and become an ordained minister with the click of a button, registering for classes shouldn't require pen, paper and lots of stairs in University Hall.
The Banner project was undeniably flawed. It was marred by rigidity, unnecessary nitpicking and those in charge of its implementation hardly listened to students' voices. We often scratched our heads at the contradictory statements emanating from University Hall. It's puzzling that $23 million was spent on a program that seems more out-of-the-box than Microsoft Office 1997. That the Banner search function is hardly usable - and almost universally replaced by the student-sponsored Mocha - is embarrassing for a project of this scope.
Despite significant concern among anti-Banner conspiracy theorists that Banner might be the death knell for the New Curriculum, it seems as though shopping period has remained mostly intact, even if the ones and zeros of override codes have replaced professors' ink on add/drop forms. Brown has forever replaced an antiquated system of carbon copy forms, whose old-world charm was certainly out-weighed by its inefficiency.
