To the Editor:
I'm a junior in the East Asian studies department, and I'd like to explain my support for the Undergraduate Council of Students resolution against Banner and echo its call to bring back the printed Course Announcement Bulletin.
Like many interdisciplinary departments, the East Asian studies department depends on cross-listed courses. When I search Banner, only courses listed under "EAST" show up. This actually excludes from the results HI 41: "Introduction to East Asian Civilization: China" and HI 42: "Introduction to East Asian Civilization: Japan," two survey courses that are required for the concentration. The registrar's office showed me how to look up "courses of interest to concentrators," but doing so only turns up a list without even linking to the referenced courses - students are forced to search individually for each cross-listed course. Implementing a system with no support for cross-listing is downright shameful for a school which goes so far as to advertise itself as supporting interdisciplinary fields of study!
Today we received in our mailboxes a sheet of paper announced as a "printed course schedule," which was closer to a Chinese takeout menu than the Course Announcement Bulletin. No cross-listed courses were included, nor were course descriptions.
I am going to cry "foul" here. This is hypocrisy. All that we, the students, are asking for is what we have always had: a printed course bulletin, listing for each concentration what courses are available, which are required, when they meet, who teaches them, a brief description and associated prerequisites. There used to be no links to follow, no hoops to jump through. The computer science students who wrote Mocha have been a huge help, but Banner cannot offer us all that information in one easy-to-access place. Even BOCA was better than this.
We would like our Course Announcement Bulletin back. Surely being able to easily see your own concentration's course offerings is worth the cost of printing paper.
K. Adam White '08April 3
