Banner crashes plague class registration

by MEAGHAN VAN DYKE

Staff Writer

As class registration began earlier this month for Mary Washington students, many experienced technological frustrations with Banner, leaving them unable to successfully register for the classes they need to complete their degrees.

According to Associate Provost and University Registrar Rita Dunston, Banner—the system used for registration, final grades, student records and financial aid applications—experienced a slight delay during the designated 8 a.m. time slots of the first two registration days. Many students reported longer wait times while on Banner to confirm registration, with error messages preventing them from selecting classes.

“I got most of the classes I want/needed in the end, but it took a few days to get there,” junior geology major Sarah Birkinshaw said. “I’m lowkey still stressed about it.”

The Banner crash comes at the heels of other technological complaints within the university, many involving unstable Wi-Fi in residence halls and academic buildings.

“The whole process took around 45 minutes to register. My Wi-Fi has never been as bad as the past few weeks here,” said Birkinshaw. “Even on school computers it’s so slow. This is a new issue for me.”

Student complaints of a faulty registration process are not new. For many, including sophomore psychology and women, gender and sexuality studies double major Alexis Sawchuk, registration issues have been present since her first semester at Mary Washington, despite her transfer credits technically placing her a semester ahead of her sophomore peers. 

“It technically took me until 8:17 in the morning to get my very first class registered, and I had to do it on my phone because nothing was loading on my laptop,” Sawchuk said.

She continued, “It was still difficult. It was less so like classes were full so I had to go to my backups. This time, it was more like Banner wasn’t loading and classes were not submitting.”

This pattern of unusually long waiting periods for registration was shared by other students, such as sophomore psychology major Sailo Boyd, who also reported issues with selecting the classes once Banner loaded.

“I got all my classes except for one, but the process itself was terrifying because once I loaded all my CRNS, it took a whopping 15 minutes for it to load whether I had gotten them or not,” said Boyd. 

She continued, “Classes that had previously been stated as available to me became not available for an unknown reason. They just said I was insufficient. It didn’t give me a reason when I tried to select them.” 

According to Director of Enterprise Services Ben Kjar, UMW runs a “Registration Readiness” test on the Banner system before registration with Ellucian, Banner’s parent company, to make sure the system is ready for registration.

“Ellucian was also monitoring the progress during our most recent registration event and with the performance issues that were encountered,” said Kjar. “Together we were able to add more resources to help alleviate some of the technology issues that students identified.”

The number of technological issues reported by students was the lowest on Thursday, the day of Freshman registration. Kjar says the information regarding the complaints made by students is taken into account in preparations for the next registration period, though preparations remain mostly the same.

“Ellucian works to continually upgrade their software and keep it secure and with these changes. It must also work to determine how to best optimize it for high demand situations such as a registration activity – something we all take seriously and strive to make as simple and secure as possible for the students at the University of Mary Washington,” Kjar said.

For future registration sessions, Dunston advises students to clear any potential holds on their records, review courses ahead of time, choose alternate classes and be ready for registration to make the process go more smoothly. 

“Specific registration window marks the beginning of the registration process, not the final opportunity,” Dunston said. “There is ample time to adjust course schedules as needed. UMW is dedicated to degree completion and we  actively monitor course offerings to ensure students have access to courses needed.”

For students who may have had a hard time with Banner crashing during registration, professors may also hold a few seats for “force-adds” into their classes, which can typically be requested by contacting the professor. 

This alternative, although used by many students to get into classes that Banner crashes may have caused them to lose seats in, is not always successful. 

The only time Boyd attempted to request a force-add into a psychology class, she was denied.

“They said the psych department generally doesn’t force-add across the board as a rule,” said Boyd.

The struggle with Banner crashes and small chances of force-adds into certain departments has the potential to cause setbacks in major progression. 

“I was registering for my spring semester of my freshman year, and I had no psychology courses,” Sawchuk said. “When you’re a psych major, it’s part of the schedule that you have to take a core class almost every semester. So I had no psychology courses, and that was going to set me behind.”

The last opportunity for students to get into classes they may have lost a seat in because of registration problems is the Fall 2025 add-drop period, which began on April 5 and ends on Aug. 29.