When new students and employees at the College of William and Mary submit their address information, according to the Banner self-service pages, they could still reside in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics[1] — which dissolved in 1991.
According to Berni Kenney, the director of enterprise information systems at IT, when the system was last updated its overseers had to make sure that all possible countries were on the list. She pointed out that Russia, in addition to the U.S.S.R., is an option on the Banner address page.
“Now we need to ask ourselves, ‘do we need it anymore?’” Kenney said.
Information Technology will examine school records to see if any former students or employees have listed the U.S.S.R. as their address. If so, Kenney said, then the U.S.S.R. will remain as an option on the Banner webpage “for as long as we need to keep that historical data” — which is most likely forever.
fn1. The article originally referred to the U.S.S.R. as the United Soviet Socialist Republic.
