The registration system was supposed to open at 8 a.m. Tuesday morning for students with fewer than three credits registered. When students opened the Drop/Add page, however, they found a listing of their current fall semester schedule.
“I was freaking out,” said Shannon Sun-Higginson ’10. “I wasn’t in any classes.”
The system eventually opened for adjustment at around 8:20 a.m., but many students who woke up early to get seats in classes said they had stopped trying to access the system by then.
While driving to work that morning, University Registrar Anna van der Burg received a call about the system not working properly. When she arrived at her office, she decided to keep the system running, rather than delaying the process by a day.
“Delaying [the start might have been] the most fair and responsible thing to do,” said Noa Wotton ’10, who said he missed getting into a class because he was away from his computer when the system was restored.
Looking back at the decision, van der Burg acknowledged that it might have been better to keep the system closed and delay the whole process by an entire day.
“Short of apologizing, I don’t know what I can do,” she said, adding that she regretted the additional stress that the malfunction may have added to an already stressful process.
“It’s a shame we blew it on the opening adjustment,” she said.
Still, van der Burg stressed that the system was fair, as it still opened to all eligible students at the same time.
She also noted that there is only a minimal advantage to changing classes as soon as the system opens, because availability will change throughout the week as students change their schedules.
According to van der Burg, the Office of the Registrar was open at 8:00 a.m. to respond to students who called or came to the offaice.
Wotton said he got a reply to his e-mail later that day, but Sun-Higginson said she never received a phone call or e-mail back from the office.
Nevertheless, Sun-Higginson was able to put the system’s technical mishap into perspective.
“It was a scary moment, but not the end of the world,” she said.
Wotton agreed.
“[The situation] was not a huge deal,” he said. “It was just a glitch.”
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