Friday, September 03, 1999

Computer crash still jams UVSC

Glitch halts all class changes, aid processing

By Jeffrey P. Haney Deseret News staff writer

OREM  J.R. Dansie stood on his skateboard in front of the Utah Valley State College registrar's office Thursday and asked if he could drop a class and receive a refund for the money he paid in tuition. It was the fourth time this week the sophomore made the request. And each time he's been denied. UVSC students such as Dansie are waiting for technicians to repair one of the college's mainframe computers that crashed Monday, three days after school started at the Orem school. President Kerry D. Romesburg said the glitch has halted all student registration and financial aid processing. School computers cannot add or drop courses, verify schedules, access grades, print out transcripts or show class schedules. The system crashed during the recent registration period. Large numbers of students simultaneously enrolling, dropping classes and applying for financial aid simply exceeded the computer's capacity, Romesburg said. Up to 20,000 students were expected to enroll this fall. "Essentially, we've been running it at max," he said. "It just started shutting down." Engineers from the school and the company that provides the system, Boston-based Digital Equipment Corp, are working to restore power. UVSC is spending $50,000 on emergency upgrades to bolster the system. Tests on the system were conducted Thursday and Friday. Officials hope no data has been lost. Deadlines to add and drop classes, pay late fees and other procedures usually followed by the school at the beginning of each semester will be changed to accommodate students, said Val Peterson, school spokesman. Thais Guimaraes, a Brazil native who came to the United States three years ago, is attending a Spanish class in hopes she'll be able to enroll when the computer system is fixed. She was told by regis- trars to try add the class  and drop two others  after the Labor Day holiday. "I have to tell the professor there's nothing I can do about it," said Guimaraes, a sophomore studying computer science. "It is (inconvenient). You just want to have everything in place at the start of the semester." Romesburg said the computer crash has hampered students' ability to receive financial aid to pay tuition, fees, books and housing costs. School officials have been offering students short-term, interest-free loans to pay for rent and other fees the school can't waive until the computer system is running again. Still, changes made this week to student schedules and financial-aid information must be entered by hand into the system. "This is going to take a long time to fix," Romesburg said. "We're really going to pay for this."

World & Nation + Utah + Sports + Business + Opinion + Front page

http://www.deseretnews.com/dn/view/1,1249,115007032,00.html?

-- Homer Beanfang (Bats@inbellfry.com), September 03, 1999

Answers

In the days of the Medieval European universities, students often paid their tuition with wine, sodomy and chickens.

-- Forrest Covington (theforrest@mindspring.com), September 04, 1999.

When did they stop using chickens?

:)

-- Will continue (farming@home.com), September 04, 1999.

Homer,

Thanks for that post.

It seems that FOF can take more than 2 or three days. How about that!

Jerry

-- Jerry B (skeptic76@erols.com), September 04, 1999.

Overload, overload ...

If this is 100% completely true & factual, and the whole story, then something good can be said for the arguments that Y2K will HELP the economy/biz/infrastructure because it forced IT/management/etc. to look at existing systems and weed + upgrade.

How much credence do we put in that view? There's *got* to be a silver lining somewhere over the rainbow. Time Will Tell.

-- Ashton & Leska in Cascadia (allaha@earthlink.net), September 04, 1999.