Did you wake up early to register for classes? It may not be necessary if you've got some programming skills.
Two years after the implementation of Banner, the University has found a new threat to the system - a few students are writing programs to automatically register for classes with limited enrollment.
In an e-mail sent to the student body, Associate Registrar Lisa Mather reminded students that the use of automated registration systems is considered a violation of University policy.
Seniors began pre-registering Tuesday, and juniors started Wednesday. Sophomores start today.
Registrar Michael Pesta said his office first noticed this issue last year when two students attempted to make changes to their registration - which include adding or dropping courses and changing grade options - and exceeded Banner's limit on the number of times students can submit changes.
Pesta said the limit is over 1,000.
"Instead of manually clicking 'submit changes' several times in a row to try to get into a course, the students in question created a program to do this automatically," Mather wrote in an e-mail to The Herald.
Both students came separately into the Office of the Registrar to complain that they were unable to register online. For the second incident, the Registrar asked Computing and Information Services to look at the logs for the student's Banner activity, and found that the number of changes attributed to the student's ID would be nearly impossible to do without a computer's assistance.
The student denied the charge.
Pesta said these programs, which could run for days if a spot does not open up, could "drag the performance of the system down."
"We felt it wasn't right for some students to gain that advantage and to risk the functionality of the system," he said.
Professor of Computer Science Steve Reiss said that this type of program would be easy to create. "Whatever you do manually, you can simulate from a program," he said.
During an interview with The Herald, Reiss proceeded to log on to Banner and investigate. "Java will do it. PHP will probably do it. Python will probably do it - most of the scripting languages will probably do it," he said.
"My guess is any reasonable programmer - anyone, say, out of sophomore class year - can write this thing in an hour or two."
There are things Banner can do to make the site more secure, but the use of automated registration programs cannot be prevented, Reiss said. "From a web server's point of view, it cannot tell the difference from a user and a computer simulating that user."
He also said that students could get around Banner's activity limit by having a program that staggers registration attempts.
Reiss said that there are fairer ways to set up course registration, ones in which "having a program like this won't help you that much."
He suggested a system that allows everyone to register in a two-week period.
At the end of these two weeks, random selection or a priority scheme will determine who will actually be enrolled in the course.
"When people drop out (of classes), it should take people from a wait list," he added.
"Any software package would have had its issues," Pesta said. "I think that Banner does the job."
Banner has an internal wait list system, Pesta said, but the wait list feature counts as one of student's five registered courses.
"We think it's better for the departments to manage the wait lists, and that way it can be more judiciously done," he said.
The computer science students with whom the Herald spoke were not aware of anyone writing these sorts of programs.
"I haven't heard of it, but I understand the concept behind it," said Alex Unger '11, a computer science concentrator and former Herald designer.
Unger said that it was "unfair" for students to register in this way, and said it was "like you're gaming the system."
He compared the programs to automated bidding on eBay, saying "it kind of defeats the purpose."
Molly Junck '10, a computer science concentrator, said she could write a program to get through Banner, "maybe if I thought about it a lot."
Though she added "I don't think I would go through the effort."
Attempts to use automatic registration programs to cheat the system will not go unpunished - offending students will lose their ability to register online for the rest of the semester and will have to register on paper in the Registrar's office, Pesta said.
"It's our responsibility to protect the ability of the students to use the software in an appropriate way," he said.
