By Radwan Farraj
CUNYfirst’s long awaited redesign over spring break has been met with backlash as students and staff report difficulties with the new design. Advertised as being easier to navigate and possessing a mobile-friendly interface, the redesign has proved to be unsatisfactory for many users since its launch.
“When you’re so accustomed to the old way, you know, change isn’t really great sometimes,” said Jaden Patrice, a senator in the Undergraduate Student Government Student Senate. “But, I feel like this is putting CUNY in a better direction and in a more modern direction, and it’s just gonna have to be something everybody has to get used to.”
In a poll conducted by The Vanguard to measure the experiences BC students have had with the redesign, seven of 17 total respondents answered that CUNYfirst has been at least slightly more difficult to use since the redesign, and another six answered that it was much more difficult to use.
Pooja Solayman, a senior at Brooklyn College, noticed the changes have impacted her as both a student and peer mentor for first-year undergraduates. Even with the help of tutorial videos posted by CUNY, both her and her students have had difficulties navigating the site.
“It’s very difficult to explain because they are freshmen and they have had this system for a semester and a half now, and then it gets changed on them,” Solayman said. Although the redesign went into effect during spring break, she believes that the timing still could have been better.
“[…]A lot of students are still registering for summer classes and winter classes. It would’ve made more sense to do it after this semester ended,” she said.
Though the site’s revamp raised issues among students, many thought a change was necessary. “The average student, especially when they’re going in, they won’t have to interact with that clunky system that they had before,” said Aharon Grama, USG’s co-president. Navigating the site’s tile organization, however, makes it slightly harder to access information in comparison to the previous version, Grama remarked.
“It [CUNYfirst] did need a revision. It did need an overhaul,” said Grama when asked about the redesign as a whole. However, Grama thinks it is still soon to pass judgment on the design and hopes that as students and staff become more adjusted, they will notice the redesign’s benefits.
Richard Pietras, BC’s Media Relations Manager, told The Vanguard about available resources to help staff and students navigate the new CUNYfirst system. These have been shared through outlets such as the DOSA Newsletter and CUNY social media platforms, and a university web page dedicated to aiding students with tutorial videos is available as well.