Isn’t online registration supposed to provide a smooth experience?
Winter quarter registration opened at midnight on Nov. 2 and a lot of students had to pay for Sinclair Community College’s blunder.
I’m not usually the one who comes prepared, but for once I thought I had a pretty well laid out plan. I worked a 10-hour shift on the Sunday before and couldn’t bring myself to stay up past midnight and register at the first opportunity. So I organized my entire winter schedule over the weekend—classes, teachers, breaks, times.
I woke up at 8 a.m. on registration day and logged into Web Advisor. With five minutes between every loaded page, I was just one step away from registration until…
SERVER UNAVAILABLE popped up.
The server kicked me off, and as far as I’m concerned, punched me in the gut. I had slowly fought my way through the process for more than 45 minutes and had come away with nothing. I was distraught and angry with my computer, even though I knew the problem was with Sinclair’s server.
I was furious.
I stormed down Interstate-75 to register in person. As I was walking through campus, it seemed as though every one was having trouble registering. I walked by one computer with a frustrated student staring at a white screen.
At that point, I knew registering in-person was going to be a bad idea.
As I was making my way to Building 10, I could hear the ruckus near the registration office. I found a large line of people with the same problem I was faced with waiting on six Sinclair employees to help fix their registration woes.
I had already missed one class because of registration, so I wasn’t going to wait in line to miss another. I decided to camp out by a computer and continue to pursue my original goal until my 10 a.m. class started.
It was 9:54 a.m. when I logged into Web Advisor. Two minutes went by and I was officially registered for classes.
I couldn’t believe it. Sinclair’s server was up-and-running by 10 a.m. and I was a happy student again. But I’m sure many others were not.
So, from 8 a.m. to 10 a.m. Sinclair had six employees aiding a college with well over 25,000 students register for winter classes.
Unbelievable.