By Christina Fazio
FSU seniors were unable to register for classes at 5 p.m. due to technical difficulties on the
myFramingham site on Sunday, Oct. 29.
Patrick Laughran, chief information officer of Information Technology Services, said there were problems with the self-service component of the myFramingham portal prior to the registration period.
Laughran said from a technology perspective, everything appeared to be fine, but some students were still having trouble.
Mark Powers, executive director of student records and registration services, said, “Prior to Sunday afternoon, I had not received any emails from students indicating that these issues were occurring either on Saturday or Sunday morning.”
Juliana Naso, a senior, said, “Registration is usually stressful for me. I always have a solid plan of my new schedule and get nervous all of the seats will run out.”
Naso said many FSU webpages were not working that day – more specifically, myFramingham, which is the registration portal, was not working.
Powers said, “I became aware of the connectivity issues occurring within myFramingham for the links to registration and to DegreeWorks just after 4 p.m. on Sunday.”
According to Powers, students in the Honors Program were registering on Friday, Oct. 27 at 5 p.m. until Saturday around noon and experienced no issues.
Naso said, “I think every senior was freaking out at 4:58 p.m.”
John Michael Ferrera, a senior, said he wasn’t surprised about the technical difficulties since there had been some during past registrations. He said he didn’t panic.
“I realized if there were technical di<culties for me, then there must be technical difficulties for others as well,” said Ferrera.
Erika Viens, a senior, said she was working during the time of registration. She said her roommate’s cousin registered for her.
Viens said she “would have been freaking out” if she was registering for herself at that time.
Molly Driscoll, a senior, said she was also at work during registration time. She said she only needed to pick one class for her last semester, but she was still nervous.
Driscoll said the website did not work for her until 5:35 p.m.
“I was mad that the registration was not working on time because I was at work and had to spend 35 minutes not doing my job trying to refresh and wait for the website to load,” she said.
Colton Madore, a senior, said he received panicked phone calls and text messages from his friends during registration time.
“I kept refreshing the page and thinking it was just the internet,” Madore said.
Dale Hamel, executive vice president, said while reviewing the Online Registration Metrics reports, the majority of registrations last year occurred during 5 to 5:15 p.m., and this year it was during 5:16 to 5:30 p.m.
Powers said his o<ce received about two dozen emails from students just after 5 p.m.
He said an error message was prompted on the students’ screens advising them to email or call the help desk.
“Each email was responded to individually, letting the student know that ITS is working on restoring connectivity. The large majority of students who had emailed were polite and understanding when they received my response,” said Powers.
Laughan said there is no clear answer whether or not this incident has any relation to the power outage on campus Friday, Oct. 27.
Laughran said there is always room for improvement when it comes to Blackboard, myFramingham and DegreeWorks.
“ITS and the library are also planning to issue a student survey next spring in an effort to gauge the satisfaction, use and perceived importance of the different information resources and services that are offered,” he said.
Powers said most seniors successfully registered by 6 p.m.
Madore said, “It wouldn’t be Framingham if there wasn’t a problem – let’s be honest.”