Bannerweb proves inaccessible as seniors log on for course registration

Update as of 4:20 p.m. today: Students received an email from the Registrar's Office. The email reads:

"Earlier this morning, the University experienced a BannerWeb outage that impacted spring 2018 registration for seniors. Subsequently, the system came back up for a short time and some seniors were able to register for classes while most were not. We regret the inconvenience and anxiety that this outage caused.

In order to hold a fair and equitable registration for all students, today's registration will be rolled back and restarted. All registration and schedule changes made on Tuesday, October 31, will be canceled. Students who were able to register for classes on Tuesday will be dropped from those courses.

As a result, the registration rotation for all classes will shift to later dates. The earliest registration will restart for seniors is Thursday, November 2. Another communication will be sent when the registration dates are finalized.

To prepare for this, Banner and BannerWeb will be down for maintenance from 10-10:30 p.m. this evening (October 31, 2017). Thank you for your patience."

Bannerweb systems crashed and were inaccessible early this morning, leaving seniors unable to access the website to register for spring courses.

According to the Registrar’s office website, course registration for current seniors was scheduled to open this morning at 7 a.m. until midnight on Oct. 31.

But, seniors found that Bannerweb was unavailable at 7 a.m. this morning.

Jack Archie, senior, said that he was fully prepared with a spreadsheet of potential courses open, only for the website to freeze.

“Like most seniors I assume, I’ve been through enough of these that I had the usual setup of the excel spreadsheet and atomic clock and was ready to hit the reload button exactly at 7,” Archie said. “But then at 7, things just got stuck loading.”

Kayla Solsbak, senior, said UR sent no email to notify or address the issue when it occurred.

“Everyone logged in, refreshed at 7, and the site went down campus-wide,” Solsbak said. “Nobody from communications ever emailed the senior class.”

The Registrar’s Office sent out an email at 9:33 a.m. to UR students, more than two hours after registration was supposed to open.

“Registration for spring 2018 classes is currently down until further notice. Information Systems is currently working to resolve the matter. More information will be forthcoming and thank you for your patience,” the email read.

Before the email was sent, the Registrar’s office asked that The Collegian wait for a mass communication to be sent out to all students.

“We can’t answer right now because we don’t have the information, but a communication will be going out,” Jean Creamer, the assistant registrar said.

Keith McIntosh, vice-president and chief information officer of UR’s Informative Services told The Collegian the division identified a problem with Bannerweb’s system to process “requests about registration” at 7 a.m. and fixed it by 7:23 a.m. this morning.

He said the Registrar’s Office was responsible for any further access problems.

“Technically, it’s back up,” McIntosh said. “The Information Services division resolved the technical issue at 7:23 a.m. If there’s anything else going on from a process standpoint, not technical, I would encourage you to talk to the Registrar’s office.”

The Information Services homepage echoed McIntosh’s statement, saying “10/31/17 Bannerweb Registration Issues: There is currently a problem with registration in Bannerweb. Please wait for a communication from the Registrar's office in regards to how to register for classes.”

According to Azin Bahari, senior, Bannerweb opened back up around 7:40 a.m. but registration remained unavailable.

“I lost studying time for my midterm today going to sleep early and then not studying in the extra time I allotted in the morning due to me refreshing the page every second,” Bahari said. “Seniors are incredibly limited in class seating. So, for bio-majors like me that need to fill our biology elective requirements in order to graduate, it’s incredibly stressful.”

She said that some students managed to register for courses despite issues, however.

An email addressing Robins School seniors from Laura Thompson, the assistant dean of undergraduate student services, said that times may be rescheduled.

"The Registrar’s Office is working to fix the issue with I.T, while deciding if we’ll have today’s senior registration group “take 2” tomorrow at 7 a.m. or at another time later today," the email said.

Jayson Vivas, senior, said that he was successful in registering for some courses but that a reset should be done so that course registration remained fair.

“Even though I was able to register for four classes, I think there needs to be a reset for the process to be fair,” Vivas said. “Everyone should have the same opportunity to register for classes.”

Bahari said she was angry about not being able to register but that she did not care about a reset so long as she was still able to get her pick of courses.

“I just want to know I have the spot I worked for,” Bahari said. “I deserve the spot I woke up for.”

Daniel Simon, senior, said that UR should give students more time and leniency during registration because of this stressful setback.

“Now to have this added technical problem seems unfair and adds even more stress to an already stressful process,” Simon said. “If they are allowed to mess up and give no reason or timeline for it at all except "We are working on it", then I feel that we should also be given some leeway in return.”

According to the Registrar’s office website, course registration for current seniors is also scheduled for late tomorrow night, from 12 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Contact news writer Arrman Kyaw at arrman.kyaw@richmond.edu.