SFU students frustrated over registration delays

It’s been a nightmare for some Simon Fraser University (SFU) students trying to enrol in their spring semester courses this month. Students have faced a number of issues trying to register through their information system, goSFU, including error messages, blank pages, and loading screens.

The issues have turned registration into an hours-long endeavour.

Due to these lengthy delays, students like Maysam Saed says she’s been waitlisted for some important classes.

“Because I’m in my fourth year and I’m trying to get into these very, like, technical and more seminar smaller classes and if I don’t get in, my whole year could be screwed up,” said Saed.

Students were notified last month that goSFU would be undergoing maintenance during enrolment month. Saed says she thinks the school’s decision was strange and believes it should have been done before or after enrolment.

“Why would they take the risk?” said Saed. “Because, the fact that they had three days of scheduled maintenance and that still didn’t do anything, if anything it made things worse.”

Another student, Victoria Lo, says these delays have also put her on waitlists, and it’s a very stressful situation.

“Every time I loaded the site, on any of my devices, it just came up as like a blank screen,” she said. “I basically had to repeat the whole process of going through blank screens and error messages and not being able to get in and sometimes getting in.”

Lo says it’s very important to enrol on time as courses can easily fill up. Lo says her program adviser was swarmed with emails from confused students due to the delays.

“If they (SFU) had an issue, they should have paused enrolment entirely because it made it really unfair for enrolment appointments because people with a later appointment than me got into the courses before me, even though I should have been able to get in before them,” said Lo.

Other students have taken their frustrations to social media, with some blaming the university’s system.

“I don’t recall it ever being this bad in past semesters. I’m guessing the maintenance over the past weekend really messed some things up.”

In an emailed statement, SFU says they have been experiencing performance issues with goSFU.

“We recognize the inconvenience this has caused, particularly for students registering for spring classes. The university has been working to resolve the situation as quickly as possible, and as of Friday, performance has improved.”

SFU says they will continue to monitor the system closely.