The Undergraduate Council of Students last night held the first of its two scheduled forums on Banner, but the presentations by Associate Provost Nancy Dunbar and University Registrar Michael Pesta were made to a small audience of about 15 students.
The forums were hosted following widespread student criticism of Banner, a project that will unify computer databases of 11 campus offices and implement online course registration this April. In the last few weeks, students sent e-mails to University officials, wrote letters to The Herald and joined the Facebook group "Brown Against Banner," reaching out to administrators in an attempt to have their voices heard.
But few attended the forum Tuesday night, and some of the students present were there in their official capacity as representatives of UCS.
"It's unfortunate that not a lot of people showed up," said Alexandra Hellquist '08, creator of the "Brown Against Banner" Facebook group, which gained over 700 members in the span of one weekend. "It was a great forum."
UCS Academic and Administrative Affairs Chair Sara Damiano '08 opened the event by conceding that UCS could have been more informative earlier, but she said that the forum was designed to improve communication.
"We weren't doing as good a job as we should have done, in terms of communicating with the student body," she said.
Dunbar followed Damiano and led the discussion, clarifying Banner's various policies and fielding questions from students.
She stressed that faculty members have the ability to override nearly any course restriction, such as enrollment limits, prerequisites or priority to seniors and concentrators.
"The most challenging problem that has been raised is how to serve individual interests while maintaining community values," Dunbar said. "We feel that we are on the right path to doing both."
Students responded with a flurry of questions, some highly critical and some charged with personal concern.
One student expressed strong negative feelings about Banner's course announcement system, burying his face in his hands when told that the paper Course Announcement Bulletin would be eliminated.
Another student, Nick Leiserson '09, gave a heartfelt statement about the New Curriculum, which he felt was in jeopardy.
"When people ask me what I like about Brown, I love telling them I can go to a course without taking prerequisites and without pre-registering, stick with it and have a chance to get in," he said. "If that's going to change, I think it will lessen student appreciation of Brown's course registration system."
But Dunbar and Pesta were adamant that the spirit of the New Curriculum would remain intact.
"We're not out to screw the students," Pesta said. "We want to protect them and give them useful information."
Students also expressed concern about prerequisites and the heightened responsibility on professors to spot students who might be exceptions to the requirements. Leiserson said prerequisites shouldn't be necessary if a student is willing to commit to a class.
"By allowing you to take any course S/NC and only needing 30 credits to graduate when you're expected to take 32 classes, Brown is telling its students to challenge themselves," Leiserson said. "If a student feels he or she can take on a class - even without prerequisites - that should be allowed."
But Daniel Leventhal '07, a computer science concentrator and one of the creators of Mocha, an alternative to the Brown Online Course Announcement, disagreed.
"There's nothing more frustrating than being in a high-level course and listening to the professor review material that students should have known from the prereqs," he said. "They're not always a bad thing."
Leventhal expressed some of his own concerns, specifically with Banner's user interface and the system's compatibility with Mocha.
"I think the way students interact with Banner is extremely important," he said. "And right now, it's crippling."
Leventhal also said he won't know if Mocha will work after Banner launches until he sees the way information will be presented.
Those who attended said the forum was a useful experience that addressed many of their concerns. But with so few attending - despite two campus wide e-mails from UCS and notification on the Facebook group's home page - last night's forum may have done little to ease overall student concern.
