The Office of Residential Life postponed six-person apartment selection—which was set to occur this afternoon—for the remainder of the day due to IT server issues, according to an email sent to students.
“The new servers couldn’t handle the amount of people that all logged in at once,” said Mike McKean, a senior staff member at the ResLife front office and MCAS ’22.
Emilie Dufault, MCAS ’23, said she believes this is the first year where everyone has to verify their housing group on the website individually.
“I think this is the first year that … everyone has to verify, which is really dumb because part of the reason of having a group leader is so that only one person can log onto the website instead of all six,” Dufault said. “Because with everyone logging on at once like of course it’s going to crash.”
Dufault said none of her roommates could get on the website to verify because the server was down due to “heavy load.” She then called ResLife, which told her to verify her roommates herself.
“[ResLife said], ‘Oh, the most you can do is then just get their ID and password and do it yourself,’ and so I was like okay, so that wasn’t helpful,” Dufault said.
The email, signed by the Housing Assignments Team, said the server issues impacted students’ ability to access the My ResLife portal and register groups for Tuesday’s room selection. There will be a “detailed update” sent to students over email later in the day, ResLife said.
McKean said he could not confirm whether pick times for four-person apartments, scheduled to begin tomorrow, will also be postponed.
“If your group was verified, it will stay verified,” McKean said. “But people that weren’t able to be registered today will be able to register on the new day of pick times. More or less, I’m expecting it to just get pushed along with [a] new schedule.”
Students will not be able to open the Returning Student Application during this pause, according to the email.
Information Technology Services (ITS) is currently working on solutions to continue the room selection process, and students can expect an update with the new room selection timeline on Wednesday, according to a follow-up email sent Tuesday evening.
ResLife said any existing information in students’ housing applications will not be lost while it addresses the problems.
“We apologize for the stress and inconvenience this has caused and we appreciate your patience and flexibility while we work to get these issues resolved as soon as possible,” the initial email reads.
Dufault said she was frustrated by the technical problems.
“I was so annoyed, just absolutely annoyed,” Dufault said. “Like I woke up early to do it. … I think everyone takes housing very seriously.”
Beth Verghese contributed to reporting.
Update (3/15/22, 8:17 p.m.): This article was updated to include quotes from Dufault and information from the follow-up email.
Featured Image by Maddy Romance / Heights Senior Staff
