Workday, the academic platform that went into effect 2022, crashed unexpectedly on Nov. 2, just one day before the sophomore class was supposed to register for winter 2023 classes. But the school has no intention to phase out the program or switch to another one.

Workday was unavailable from around 7:50 a.m. to about 5:30 p.m. on Nov. 2.

Early in the crash, the Registrar’s Office decided to push back sophomore registration to the following week. Deputy Chief Information Officer Kerrie Chapman said the office didn’t know how long the outage would last and did not want to risk it continuing into the next day.

According to the incident report Workday filed after the crash, a situation the company thought impossible had occurred. The power at a data center in Portland, where Washington and Lee’s academic information is stored, went out. This left the school and 10% of Workday’s other clients unable to access the platform.

Olaide Olatunbosun, ’26, found out about the crash from an email the day of. Olatunbosun said the delay was nice because it gave her more time to plan out the schedule that she wanted.

Chapman said Washington and Lee switched to using Workday for registration and other services because the past software, Colleague, was “clunky” and expensive to support.

“It was showing its age. It had been heavily customized, meaning that code had been changed. And we would have to revisit that code every time there was a patch or new release,” Chapman said.

Even though moving to Workday fixed many of these issues for Chapman’s team, the student perspective is very different.

Upperclassman, who registered for classes with a program called “Self Service” before the school started using Workday in the fall of 2022, said  they liked the program better.

“It was very similar to Workday but what you had to do to request an override in a class wasn’t too complicated. It was user friendly… very accessible, unlike Workday,” said Eltice Langmia, ’25.

However, Langmia said the convenience of having one Workday app to do everything, from registering for classes to submitting work study hours, outweighs the platform’s flaws.

The Workday crash disrupted not just registration, but also payroll, time entry and employment records. Still, Chapman said she couldn’t see the school transitioning away from the system anytime soon.

“I feel very confident, having that huge team of people [at Workday]. Workday is used by Fortune 500 companies all over the world, and so they have a huge responsibility to their customer base,” Chapman said.

Waitlists generate campus-wide frustration

Once-in-a-lifetime crashes are not the only headaches associated with registration. Waitlists serve as a source of frustration for students and professors alike.

Zolia Ponce de Leon, a politics professor, teaches the only winter 2024 section of applied statistics. The course is in high demand for students in the Williams School, biology majors and more. Ponce de Leon thinks that there are not enough spots open in the class to meet demand.

“We, the politics department, need to hire more professors to offer more sections, or the other departments that are sending their students to my class [need to hire more],” Ponce de Leon said. “I think that we need to find a solution because our students need to take these classes, and I have over 30 students on my waitlist, and there is nothing I can do to help them.”

Things have gotten better for Ponce de Leon, though, after many majors like business started their own separate courses to meet the need.

Ponce de Leon said she normally prioritizes seniors who need to take the class in order to graduate. In fact, for certain seniors or students who have been on Ponce de Leon’s waitlist for year after year, she reserves spaces for them in her class before registration even starts.

Many waitlisted students, not just those in Ponce de Leon’s class,  often email the professor to make their case on why they should be moved up on the waitlist. Ponce de Leon said she knows when registration season starts because of the flood of emails in her inbox. But Ponce de Leon said she only reads emails from juniors and seniors.

“For the first-year students, obviously there is nothing I can do other than tell you to wait until next year. So I rarely open them,” Ponce de Leon said.

Despite the fact that many students want Ponce de Leon to “make them a spot in the class,” she can’t decide the number of students in her classes. Professors’ contracts list how many classes they are going to teach and how many students are going to be in those classes. Creating more seats in a specific class would require a change of Ponce de Leon’s contract.

Olatunbosun knows what it is like to be on the other side of waitlists. Olatunbosun plans on majoring in computer science with a minor in poverty and human capability studies, two competitive disciplines.

“All the professors will say you have time [to take a class]. But, realistically, I feel like you don’t. Depending on what track you want to be on, you have to have a certain number of credits before you graduate,” Olatunbosun said.

When she got on waitlists for the winter semester, Olatunbosun began emailing professors.

“If you don’t [email the professors], then it’s just going to seem like you’re just any other person trying to get the class,” Olatunbosun said.

Ponce de Leon thinks that the waitlist system needs to be done away with entirely.

“So many schools don’t have a waitlist system and I don’t think that we should have one,” Ponce de Leon said. “I think that students should be able to rank their choices… So that you get rid of all this anxiety that our students have to deal with.”

Students declare majors to avoid registration stress

Some professors say they prioritize putting people committed to their majors into the most competitive classes. Thus, many are trying to show their commitment to their chosen fields of study earlier than ever.

Kaia Beddows, ’27, is planning on declaring an English major by the end of her freshman year. She said she is declaring early in order to get spots reserved for majors in 300 level or higher classes.

“I’ve had a lot of professors tell me that I should declare [my major] early since I know it’s what I want to do,” Beddow said.

One person who decided her major early is Emma Scott, ’26, who declared  an environmental studies major with a minor in poverty and human capability Studies during the winter of her freshman year.

Since Scott was already very sure of what she wanted to major in as a freshman, she didn’t see any reasons to continue exploring her interests before declaring.

“Also, I know that around major declaration time for sophomores a lot of advisors get really swamped by people asking them, and also the registrar gets really overwhelmed. So I wanted to get it out of the way,” Scott said.

Scott said she said she is even more confident in her decision now that she is seeing her sophomore friends still unsure of what to major in and feeling like they have wasted credits exploring interests.

“It’s like a weight lifted off your shoulders,” Scott said.