When Detroit senior Kaylun Butler started her day on Monday, she thought “it was just going to be like any other registration day.” Butler said she was “getting ready to start” registering when she began “seeing so many emails saying the system was overworked.”
At 8:29 a.m. – one minute before the first registration time slot – students were forwarded an email by Associate Dean of Academic Affairs and Registrar Drew Dunham from Assistant Director of Accounting Jennifer Sullivan, including a “Course Registration Guide,” which introduced a new step to the registration process: signing a student financial responsibility agreement (SFRA). According to Butler, this led to confusion and subsequent website crashes. Many students were forced to go to the Registrar and the Information Technology (IT) Help Desk to sign up for classes.
“It was a crap show, it was insane,” Butler said. “Especially trying to get into classes I need for my graduation or for my major and stuff, what the heck can I do?”
St. Clair Shores sophomore Tess Watkins had a noon time slot, and went to the registrar’s office after not being able to complete her registration due to the SFRA students learned about that morning.
“I first went to the registrar, they told me to fill out a form, but the form wasn’t showing up on my laptop, so they sent me to IT to figure it out,” Watkins said.
Watkins added that after going to IT, she was given another computer to complete the form on before being directed to finish registering on her personal computer, which Watkins was able to do without further issue.
Orlando, Florida, sophomore Carter Stahl said registering has never been like this before, “not to this extent.”
“My friends in my classes were talking about how their entire website was down, and then I went in to go and look, and it wouldn’t even open,” Stahl said.
Stahl added that he had to line up at the Registrar’s office to have his classes inputted manually during his 10:30 a.m. registration window. Stahl filled out the form, but said he hasn’t “had to do the form” in past semesters.
Dunham said that Monday was “hectic” for his office.
Dunham added that the SFRA form was introduced last semester, just differently. The decision to add signing the form to “capture” students before registration was made months ago with accounting.
“Unfortunately, the communication with the how-to part of that wasn’t set out until very late,” Dunham said.
Director of IT Eric Beadle added that the number of students trying to sign the document all at once caused the website to overload and crash.
“We had to tweak some settings and the servers, by 11 or shortly thereafter things smoothed out,” Beadle said.
This led to the email sent out at 10 a.m. from Dunham asking students to only be on the website if they were applying for classes.
“Please DO NOT attempt to register for classes or log on to your plans before your registration time,” the email stated. “You will only get an error message and are overloading the system.”
Associate Provost and professor of kinesiology Heather H. Betz said she thinks the registrar staff “came together well, figured out where the problems were and then got those fixed.”
Betz said that as a learning institution, “we want to always figure out how to improve” which includes the registration process.
Betz added that she “champions” student advisors and faculty for helping students during Monday’s registration, and that “going forward they are going to be a real help” with advising and registration.
On Thursday, the IT Help Desk reviewed logs and made sure that the system was “capable of handling extra traffic,” Beadle said.
“Thursday was a great run, and it was wonderfully quiet in IT,” Beadle said.
Dunham said he hopes that after this registration week, “normal progress” can resume. He added that after 18 years of registering students, “we’ve never had a system problem like this.”
“I would expect this not to happen again, for sure,” Dunham said. “We’ll keep working on it and making it the best process we can make it.”
Bonnie Lord also contributed reporting to this story.
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