Banner Meltdown

Jake Eiden and Caleb Brown

*Portions of the story were posted originally on BUnow.com. To view the original story, please click here.

On April 17 at 8:00am EST, Priority Scheduling for summer and fall classes began. Priority consists of Athletes, ACT 101, TRIOSSS, Honors College, Military, Board of Governors, Students with Disabilities, and Graduate Students. However, once they logged onto Banner for the first time, things did not go smoothly.

 In order for students to register for classes in the Summer and/or Fall, they must have met with their advisor to get an “advising clearance” so an academic hold can be removed from their account. Failure to do so will result in students unable to schedule.

Leah Samuel, a student in Media & Journalism, and a part of the Honors College said she encountered a few issues when trying to schedule. “When I was registering for a 200 level class, the system failed to recognize that I am currently in the prerequisite for that class and didn’t let me add it to my schedule.” 

Leah also mentioned she had to email the professor of the class to have them hand-enroll her into the course. “All of my classes were on a plan together, but error messages came up within my plan that delayed me in fully registering for the fall semester.” 

She also stated a few benefits of the program, one being the building of different plans to keep yourself organized. She also likes that incoming freshmen will not have to learn two systems at the same time as current students. However, Leah is frustrated that they rolled out a system that wasn’t ready yet.

The Banner/Onesis system will be replacing campus systems such as Bolt and MyHusky as part of a system-wide initiative to have all Fourteen PASSHE universities using the same Student Information Systems or SIS. 

The system change had been planned for almost a year. Tom McGuire, the Director of Communications and Media Relations said in an email about the new system. “We needed to move quickly so that all CU campuses shared one SIS.” 

Rosa Lara, the Chief Information Officer for PASSHE who is overseeing the project was asked what students are gaining by using this system. 

She highlighted that the system would have improved cybersecurity, access to consultant resources, and allow students to be able to collaborate with themselves.

Going further she stated, “The common functionality is something all schools will benefit from. Think about all of the collaboration whereas institutions had to solve problems on their own. Now we’re able to tap into resources across the system and really function like a state system.” 

However, Banner has not benefited students so far. Eliza Nevis, another major in Media Journalism, said she also encountered issues with Banner. “The prerequisite for a class I wanted to take wasn’t in the old curriculum and that’s messing me up if i can take this class or not.” She sent an email to Dr. Jason Genovese, Department Chair of Media & Journalism to have him hand-roll her in the course, if possible. Dr. Genovese was able to do this. Eliza has no idea why she scheduled today since she isn’t in honors or isn’t considered an athlete while doing cheerleading.

Even though Media & Journalism majors have reported their individual issues with scheduling, many other students are experiencing problems with prerequisites, which could be the main issue. 

Mikella Monaco, Exercise Science Major commented, “It was crashing and I couldn’t schedule all of my classes because my prerequisites are in progress and not completed… Advisors and department chairs are having to fix everything.” 

Problems have also arisen while students tried scheduling general education classes. Gracie Root, sophomore nursing major, expressed concerns about not being able to enroll in an introductory music class, which is being offered as a general education course.

Scheduling continues over the next few weeks, as students are assigned a scheduling date based on their number of earned credits. The Voice will continue to update this story as Banner’s technical issues are solved.