Rowan seniors attempting to register for fall classes throughout the day on Tuesday were met with a roadblock: Rowan’s Banner system was not working.

The message on Banner, as well as on the Office of the Registrar’s main page, read: “Registration for Fall 2017 has been postponed due to technical issues caused by demand. Registration will reopen for seniors (and others who were already eligible) at 7 a.m. on Wednesday, March 22.”

The message also mentioned that only fall registration was unavailable, with summer registration still accessible.

According to Rebecca Gollihur of Rowan University Registrar, an internal Banner systems issue was to blame.

“What I’ve been told by IRT [Information Resources and Technology] is that the system was overloaded by the number of simultaneous hits,” Gollihur said. “The Provost’s office, IRT and this office spent the entire day working together to see what we could do to bring it back up as quickly as possible for all the students, but still make it fair so that some students didn’t have an advantage over others.”

Senior health promotion and wellness management major Kyle Oksten expressed frustration with the occurrence.

“It was very frustrating because I’m up for a promotion at work that’s dependent on getting my schedule a certain way,” he said. “They said they fixed the problem, so I hope all goes well tomorrow.”

Upon attempting to register Wednesday morning, Oksten mentioned that “the system crashed for about the first half hour after opening, but it worked after that.”    

Senior English and elementary education major Miranda Myers decided to avoid trying to register entirely while the system was down.

“I only have to register for a student teaching seminar, but I’m not going to try to go in when everybody else tries because it’s just going to keep crashing,” she said.

Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer of Information Resources and Technology (IRT) Mira Lalovic-Hand shed light on the specifics of the problem.

“Over the last several months, we have implemented multiple upgrades to a number of University-managed systems,” Lalovic-Hand said. “Unfortunately, some unforeseen interactions resulting from those changes affected our ability to handle the number of students who were attempting to register.”

Hand noted that the fall registration period is the busiest time of year for the system.

“By 6 p.m. Wednesday, 2,910 of the 4,600 eligible students were able to successfully register for 10,144 sections,” she added.

To make the resolution to the system crash fair for all students, Gollihur, Hand and the other staff members working on the problem decided to close registration entirely for the remainder of Tuesday and reopen it Wednesday morning at 7 a.m.

In an email sent out Wednesday evening, the IRT Center updated students on the status of Banner and registration.

“In order to increase the stability of the system, IRT is limiting the number of students who can simultaneously access Banner,” the email read.

Students unable to register were advised to continue trying, or to contact their advisors for additional assistance.

Lalovic-Hand conveyed the IRT Center’s commitment to staying on top of the problem for future registration periods, saying, “We are continuing to monitor the system. We will do our best to ensure the system remains as stable as possible as we move through the upcoming registration periods.”

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