Banner shuts out students on first day of semester

Hundreds of students lined up in hallways and around buildings today trying to fix registration problems on the first day of classes for the fall semester.

Many students were dropped from classes despite paying weeks ago.

Complaints vary but most stem from a glitch in ACES, the district's new online registration portal for students.

The system has dropped students from courses, incorrectly charged students out-of-state tuition and sometimes incorrectly charged three-peat tuition rate, according to interviews with students, faculty and staff.

Many students unknowingly registered at another district college and ended up walking around campus looking for buildings that aren't here.

Banner Student Services and ACES systems experienced glitches early this morning, President Robert Zeigler said, until the district decided to shut down the systems and reboot at about 11:30 a.m. He said the systems didn't work consistently until close to 2 p.m.

Dr. Thomas Cleary, vice chancellor for planning, performance and information systems, said in an interview late today that the systems were hit with "tremendous traffic" today and more processors had to be dedicated to student registration to increase the speed.

Fletcher Administration Center was packed for hours with students seeking help after being shut out of ACES.

Zeigler said it was "extremely frustrating" for students and "extremely frustrating for the people trying to help them."

He said staff has been working really hard all day.

Department offices, especially math and English, tried to help lines of students get into the classes they needed by manually inputting changes.

English Chair Alex Bernal said his department helped roughly 300 students today who were incorrectly enrolled in sections or dropped for nonpayment even though they had paid.

Bernal said one "significant problem" students experienced is not being able to tell whether they had enrolled in a class because it wasn't showing on ACES.

The math department assisted about 200 students today not including constant phone calls to their offices.

Lorraine Lopez, professor and adjunct and evening coordinator of the math and computer science department, said the department dropped about 60 sections Saturday.

After a surge of students coming to the department today, she said staff is trying to offer more Flex 2 classes to compensate for the closed sections in the 16-week term. Flex 2 classes meet the second half of the semester.

She added that adjunct faculty who lost classes and potentially wages could gain some back by teaching flex classes.

Lopez warns that many students may not be enrolled with the professor they had originally anticipated because by now those sections are probably closed.

"We're trying to motivate them, but there's only so much you can do when Banner goes down," Lopez said.

Some students are being dropped from one or all their classes despite paying their tuition bill weeks ago. Many of those students were unable to register for those classes because their spot was given to a late registrant.

Cleary said the system does not randomly purge students, explaining that if a student was dropped, it was for a reason.

He said the way the district is addressing the issues is by extending registration until 11:59 p.m. Thursday so that more students can register.

"It's a new system and it's challenging," he added. "Today wasn't the greatest day, but 2,000 students registered for classes."

"It's just been a problem," Zeigler said, but advised department chairs to be flexible. Students who were dropped incorrectly for nonpayment should be able to get back into those classes, he said.

"It sucks and I hate it," speech therapy sophomore Shalimir Price said while standing in a long line today at the financial aid office.

Price said she registered and paid for classes six weeks ago but was dropped. She said she was able to register only for six hours today.

Liberal arts freshman Philip Miller said, "Apparently, I don't even have a Banner ID. It's someone else's and I have two classes that say they're on SAC, but they're not."

Forensics sophomore Richard Rios is also experiencing a run-around after finding out his classes were dropped from the system this weekend.

"I called 20 times to get information, but it said it was busy, so I thought I'd stop by and get information, but apparently everyone was thinking the same thing," Rios said.

Jacob Beltran contributed to this story.