The system relied upon by hundreds of students looking to finalize their schedules is once again suffering from a lack of leadership.
No one seems to be able to pinpoint what went wrong, but the entire Penn Course Review Web site is not functioning as the fall semester gets underway.
Some student-government leaders blame Internet server issues for the failure, while others say that a dearth of rising staff members is at fault.
The Course Review functions as a database for class and professor ratings and is used by undergraduates to find the most popular professors and classes. It has been unavailable since Aug. 12, and -- despite a claim on the site that it would be accessible by the beginning of the school year -- the system was still unavailable as of last night.
The issues this year are reminiscent of those faced just four years ago, when the Course Review failed to activate its Web site due to lack of senior leadership.
At that point, student government leaders took control of the project and resurrected it in its current form.
Once it was up and running, with a new, University-sponsored Web site, student government officials backed off.
"It's possible that we should have stayed around for a little while longer," Undergraduate Assembly Chairwoman Rachel Fersh said, adding that now, "the first step is getting everybody on the same page."
She estimated that it could take anywhere from two days to two weeks to get the Web site up and running, as the specific problems still had not been identified.
The Course Review is administered by the Student Committee on Undergraduate Education but is hosted by the vice provost for University life. College senior Farrah Freis, the chairwoman of SCUE, was unable to provide specific information about the site.
"We're working as hard as we can to get [the Course Review] back up ASAP," Freis said. "We're doing everything we can. We're going to be working with the administration, the UA and kids who run Penn Course Review" to solve the problem.
Freis said that SCUE and the VPUL office have collaborated on the Course Review for as long as it has been online.
SCUE has "been doing it for a long time. It used to be a book," Freis said. "It's only been online for three or four years. It's on the University server. It's ultimately their control."
Most other University Web sites seem to be functioning, including the VPUL Web site.
College junior Karam Kapur was hoping "just to see what other people thought about teachers and which recitation section is better."
"It's not much of an inconvenience personally," Kapur said, "but I can see how it would be."
Joshua Veit, a Wharton freshman, expressed stronger sentiments.
"I'm really disappointed," Veit said. "I wanted to see who my Econ [professor] was. It was a really good resource."
Fersh said she sympathizes with students' distress.
"It is obnoxious for freshmen who have just come back and have no idea what classes to take," Fersh said. "I can understand the frustration."
Missing: Penn Course Review Web site - Last seen Aug. 12. - Supposed to have been up before the fall semester began - Overseen by Student Committee on Undergraduate Education - URL: www.vpul.upenn.edu/coursereview/
