Cygnet, a popular campus service provided by the Swarthmore College Computer Society (SCCS), unexpectedly shut down for a period during the first week of classes of the Fall 2025 semester. The service, akin to a digital yearbook, allows students to search for their peers, displaying students’ names, photos, email addresses, and class years, along with dorm and room numbers. After a little over a week of going dark, the website was back up and running the night of Sept. 17.
The service’s pause marks the beginning of the largest information technology project in the college’s history. After over two decades of running Ellucian’s Banner, a higher education enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution, the college is switching to Workday, a popular cloud software student information system. ERP systems aim to help organizations like Swarthmore manage student information and other operations, like human resources and payroll, on a single platform.
As the college modernizes its information systems, it is also reexamining many of its information practices. In preparation for the transfer, SCCS brought the site down.
As of now, Information Technology Services (ITS) is still providing the data used by Cygnet. However, Andrew Ruether, senior director of academic technology, explained that since Banner is feeding the data for Cygnet, the service will eventually be shut down. In the meantime, the college registrar is willing to provide student information to SCCS to continue Cygnet.
Considering student privacy concerns, Ruether said that, in the future, a change in the service could include not displaying dorm information. SCCS President Damian René ’27 noted that students can already hide their dorm information after creating an SCCS account.
Cygnet is one of the oldest SCCS services, following student mailing lists. “I’m not sure why, after so many years, this access is being revoked,” René said. Before the service went online in the early 2010s, print copies dated back to 1945. René said it will run for the fall semester and hopefully the spring semester, “But once we lose access to this data, there will be no sustainable way to keep the service alive.”
Meanwhile, the college will continue moving forward with implementing Workday. The biggest difference between Banner — the current legacy system — and Workday is the use of on-premise versus cloud software. Banner is run in-house, and a cloud solution is hosted by a third party, allowing developers to update the software more efficiently.
Even though Banner is updating to a cloud system, the move would be a big step for the college anyway. “The developers of Banner know that they can’t continue to compete against other companies,” Chief Information Technology Officer Jason Parkhill explained, “So they’re going to make all of their customers move to their version of Banner in the cloud system.”
Given the limitations of Banner’s architecture as an on-premise software, the service is not developing at the same pace as its competitors. After reviewing demos from various developers, the college decided on Workday.
“One of the biggest advantages of a Workday-type product is that it has its history beginning in the 21st century,” Parkhill said.
Such benefits include an app to consolidate all the college’s information systems — many of which were used to supplement the functionality of Banner. “[Banner’s] strategy to expand their product has been to acquire other companies instead of improving,” Parkhill said. One such service is Degree Works, which has been collected by Banner but not fully integrated.
The transition to Workday will happen in two phases. The first phase, which includes human resources, payroll, and financials, began planning in July and is scheduled to go live in Fall 2026. Phase two, the student information system, is scheduled to begin in early 2027 and is expected to go live by Spring 2028.
Parkhill acknowledged that the transition will be challenging. As students and faculty will have to adjust to a new system for academic services, a new team dedicated to “change management” has been formed to manage communication and training as the phases roll out.
Editor’s Note: Damian René, the President of SCCS, who is quoted in the article, is also the Web Manager of The Phoenix.
