Saturday, October 11th, 2008

URSA slowdown causes enrollment difficulties

Problems logging on to the University Records System Access Web site complicated an already frustrating process for some students enrolling in spring-quarter classes last week.

Upon attempting to log on to URSA late last week, some students reported receiving a message stating that the maximum number of students were already logged on to the server. While some students were able to access the site within a few minutes of their initial attempts, others said they had to wait several hours to get into the system.

According to the Registrar’s office, the university had been having trouble with its servers on Friday, but no one could be reached for further comment.

The server problems meant some students ran the risk of not being able to enroll in their desired classes during their scheduled enrollment time.

First-year biology student Nirmal Patel said problems with URSA were an exasperating addition to the enrollment process.

“It’s hard enough to get all the classes you want because there’s so many students trying to get into the same classes, so they fill up really fast,” Patel said. “To have computer problems on top of that is just ridiculous. I don’t want my schedule to be messed up just because of URSA.”

First-year undeclared student Megan Farmer said trouble accessing the system almost caused her to miss her enrollment time.

“I wasn’t able to log on before I had class, and by the time I got to a computer again, my enrollment period was almost over,” Farmer said. “It would have been really frustrating to miss my priority pass.”

Some students expressed frustration at the additional time they had to spend trying to log on.

“Even though I finally was able to enroll in classes, it was really annoying because I had to keep trying until (URSA) would let me log in. It took way longer than it should have and was really a waste of my time,” Patel said.

Farmer also said that the system was noticeably slower compared to other quarters.

“Usually, things load pretty fast on URSA, but it seemed like it was taking forever for everything to go through,” she said.

Because the problem seemed to be worst during peak hours, some students had more success accessing the site during off hours. First-year history student Cameron Lee said he didn’t have any problems with URSA because he enrolled in the morning.

Most students who were affected had enrollment passes last week, but other students simply trying to plan their course schedules were also impacted.

“I couldn’t log on to URSA to see when my enrollment time was or how full classes already were,” said Matt Lemen, a second-year history student.

Though URSA is always inaccessible between 1 a.m. and 6 p.m. on Sundays, students who visited the site Sunday morning received a specific message stating that the server was down for maintenance.