IT systems fail while students register for courses

Emma Livingstone
author
Henry Anderson
author
Published on June 20, 2019
The outage to the SSC was especially disruptive for students with registration times slated throughout the day. Michelle Huang

Many students’ course registrations were disrupted on Tuesday when UBC’s IT systems experienced a sudden outage.

UBC IT posted a bulletin first identifying the outage at 10:45 a.m., just as students were logging in for their 10:50 registration time.

The outage was wide-ranging, impacting the Student Services Centre (SSC), Faculty and Staff email (FASmail), the Human Resource Management System and UBC wifi channels like ubcsecure and ubcvisitor.

In a statement to The Ubyssey, UBC IT said their staff was able to find the source of the outage and worked to resolve the issue immediately, but they did not confirm what the source was.

“UBC IT is working with its vendors to understand the root cause of the outage, and preventative measures moving forward,” reads the statement.

Except for a few services that needed to be confirmed by users, the system was eventually restored at 3:30 p.m.

Outage Outrage

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['auto'] Courtesy Reddit user ohohfourr

The outage to the SSC was especially disruptive for students with registration times slated throughout the day.

“My time was 10:50. It crashed at 10:49, no joke,” wrote reddit user universitymastery.

“I will not be surprised or disappointed when I come home from work at 8PM tonight, and pick through the rejected STTs + early-morning courses I hoped I wouldn't have to be stuck with,” added ReallyGoodMeme.

The outage was also problematic for students on campus who needed to use UBC wifi and other services like Canvas for coursework.

“1 day before an exam where all the prep is on canvas. Yikes,” wrote HelpfulHelicopter.

Once the website was back up, users celebrated with an all-caps thread.

“THE SYSTEM'S BACK, FOLKS! BIG SHOUT OUT TO ALL THE HARD WORKING PEOPLE OF UBC IT… R'AMEN,” wrote Justausername1234.

“R'AMEN,” agreed umbrellabear88, “NOW I CAN GO BACK TO MAKING WORKLISTS AS MY FORM OF PROCRASTINATION.”

All students who missed their registration time because of the outage will have their times rescheduled through the SSC.