On Thursday, April 3, Fordham College at Lincoln Center’s (FCLC) freshmen class, residents and commuters alike, woke up at 7 a.m. to register for fall 2014 classes but were unable to do so, due to a system failure.

Students began to notice problems with the registration system as early as 9:52 p.m. on Monday, April 2, when they tried to look up courses under the registration tab.

 “I am unable to look at any classes via my.fordham.edu,” Kyle Casey, FCLC ’17 wrote in an email to Assistant Dean for First Year Students at FCLC Rev. Vincent DeCola, S.J.

“I emailed him last night just before 10 p.m., and he told me that I would have to contact IT, myself, in the morning. It’s been nearly 12 hours since they have been alerted about the problem, and it hasn’t been fixed. This line is crazy,” Casey said, as he waited in line to register manually with Father DeCola, along with many other freshman students.

 According to multiple sources, students started lining up outside of DeCola’s office around 7:01 a.m., as he was available to register people manually. The line outside of DeCola’s office was at least 75 students deep by 8:00 a.m.

 “It’s very unfortunate that this happened. I was unaware of it until this morning when I saw freshmen returning to McMahon in frustration,” Rev. Robert R. Grimes, S.J., dean of FCLC, said. “The associate and assistant deans are doing a heroic job with trying to do this by hand, and I hope everyone is able to get the schedules they need to get; unfortunately, they may not get as convenient as a schedule as they want.”

 “I know Father DeCola has been registering some people by phone [like commuters]. The first thing I said to the associate dean was that the people that will be most harmed by this are going to be the commuters,” Grimes said.

 According to students in line, students that emailed DeCola were told to go to his office immediately so he could register them. At about 7:10 a.m., there was a line around 25-people long, Jason Toledano FCLC ’17 said. Within 25 more minutes, “there had to be at least 100 people,” he said.

 “I didn’t get any email from Father Vin; I heard about [deans registering] through Facebook at 7 a.m. It took me an hour and a half to get here from Jersey,” Jade Reyes, FCLC ’17, said.

 At 8:53 a.m., an email blast notifying the entire freshmen class of the email failure was sent out by Fordham Information Technology. “We are currently experiencing problems with Banner self-service including registration,” IT said in its email blast. “IT is aware and staff are presently engaged and working to resolve the issue as soon as possible.  We will update the community as soon as we have more information.”

 At 8:56 a.m., students were able to register in. Dean Desciak, assistant dean for juniors and transfer students, was also in Grimes’ office.

Hunter Blas, FCLC ’17, said, “I don’t understand why they did not move registration to another day to give time to fix the IT systems and give everyone a fair shot at registration.”

“As a commuter, it’s even more frustrating; we have to travel for a long time just to come in line … as a prestigious university, we should have better registration service, considering we are paying close to 50K a year,” Jonathon Olmez, FCLC ’17 and a commuter student, said.

“Even God, at least not the Jesuit God, cannot fix these IT problems,” Max Berger, FCLC ’17, said.

 One student in line cried out,  “Did RHA organize this? This is a terrible community builder.”

“In 1995, a rumor went through McMahon Hall that there were not enough classes to go around. This was back when registration was done by hand and was done in the second-floor lobby,” Grimes said. “When the elevator doors opened, you could not even get into the lobby; it was that crowded. It was total panic and that’s what I thought of when I saw that this morning.”

Toledano attempted to lighten the situation by handing out free bacon to his peers. “My first instinct when leaving was ‘I gotta get them something. What can I buy in bulk in the cafeteria?,’” he said. “ I almost bought people sushi but remembered that the sushi here is, let’s say, sub-par. Then I saw the bacon and was like, ‘BOOM. Who doesn’t want bacon?’”