Senior students woke up on Wednesday morning to register for classes only to encounter a variety of technical malfunctions on Banner Self-Service, the college’s course registration platform. The college recently rolled out a new registration system with a “plan ahead” feature for class registration with the hope of streamlining the process.
Many seniors reported issues ranging from site freezes to classes not appearing on Banner Self-Service.
“I thought the whole ‘plan’ feature was cool,” Diana Dane ‘24 said. “But then, here comes registration morning, and it would just continue to load for me. I was stressed out because I added all my courses and a bunch of errors kept popping up.”
Julianna Loccke ‘24 also experienced these glitches, as the site took a long time to load. Loccke has one more class that she needs for her architectural studies minor, and with only one semester left she expected that getting into the course would be simple. However, Loccke said that she felt lost navigating the new system.
“Because of how slow I was [with the new system], I did not get it,” Loccke said. “I could guarantee for a fact if it was the old method, I would have gotten into the class … I was so pissed.”
According to Dane, many of her friends experienced similar errors.
“I think it took around half an hour for it to finally load,” Dane said. “And all my friends were texting me that the same exact thing was happening to them.”
Lily Gilmore ‘24 wrote in an email that as a LEO she was trained by the class deans on how to navigate the new registration process. Despite being told that the plan ahead feature would make it so that she did not need the course registration number, known by the acronym CRN, for her classes, she found this to not be the case when she logged on.
“I ended up not writing my CRNs,” Gilmore wrote. “The whole site didn’t load for me, my plan didn’t show up. I couldn’t even look up classes to find the CRN to add.”
Gilmore wrote that her experience will impact how she makes recommendations to her students as a LEO.
“I met with two of my first years already and told them to use the plan feature, but after this morning I’m telling everyone to register with CRNs,” Gilmore wrote.
The registrar, Kara Howe, wrote in an email that the college had worked extensively to test and vet the site ahead of registration, as well as publicize the changes to all students. Students received an email on Monday detailing “tips for course registration,” weeks after the new Banner Self-Service features went live. Some students felt that the changes were not communicated effectively.
“I think they could have definitely done a better job of introducing it to students and explaining any difference,” Olivia Zoretic ‘24 said. “They need to communicate better with students when this is happening because I just heard through word of mouth from other students.”
Howe wrote that the registrar’s office had only been reached out to on Wednesday morning by three students regarding difficulties with registration. She noted that in the first several minutes, almost 500 students were registered.
“By the end of the day, over 550 seniors had completed registrations,” Howe wrote. “We did not have other technical issues reported to us thereafter.”
Many of the seniors expressed frustration that this happened for their last-ever registration.
“I was really confused as to why mid-semester Lafayette changed the registration process,” Dane said. “It was frustrating as a senior to have this whole new system.”
According to Howe, Information Technology Services is working to fix the problems before others register.
“[Information Technology Services] is researching what may have caused the disruption this morning so that any issues are addressed ahead of registration on Friday,” Howe wrote.
Madeline Marriott ’24 contributed reporting.
Correction 11/10/2023: A previous version of this article mispelled the name of Julianna Loccke ’24 as Juliana Locke.
