Belk library... a familiar sight
at 2 a.m.?
How sleep deprivation
affects students
p. 8
Fall Dance Concert
Elon University s Weekly Student Publication
Cfje ^eniittlum
Wednesday, November 14,2007 > www.elon.edu/pendulum • Volume 33, Edition 23
Students stress during OnTrack shutdown
Kaitlin Ugolik
News Editor
Last Wednesday, many students
lined up inside Alamance to register
for classes manually while OnTrack
was down for several hours.
Chris Fulkerson, assistant vice
president for technology, said he was
in a meeting at around 9:20 a.m. when
he started getting phone calls that the
system was down.
OnTrack, a creation of Datatel,
is the university’s “Web front end;”
basically a way to access information
and conduct registration online.
On Wednesday, OnTrack slowed
down and stopped twice, once after
a reboot, but the rest of Datatel was
running fine, according to Fulkerson.
“People want information and
an e-mail right away, but I don’t
know what to tell them sometimes,”
Fulkerson said. He didn’t have enough
information to explain the situation
until after a 5 p.m. meeting with
technology staff members and the
Registrar.
“It took a while to get information
from the Datatel technicians and our
staff,” he said.
Some people didn't experience any
problems with registration on OnTrack.
It was only when more than 100 people
logged on that the system, “came to a
crawl and stopped," Fulkerson said.
“ I've been here for four years and
this has never happened,” senior Rob
Olson said.
Datatel programmers made
corrections to the system until 9 p.m.,
but they could not test the system’s
capability to handle the number of
people that would use the system
during registration times.
m
Ashley Barnas/ Assistant Photo Editor
Students stand in line Wednesday to manually sign up for classes at the Registrar's Office after OnTrack shut down.
Trevor Kelly, applications/
Web programmer, said he and his
colleagues, “basically applied a bunch
of tweaks to the system.”
They removed all Datatel users
from the site at 2:45 p.m. and restarted
the database. They also added another
“listener,” or channel, for the database
to “listen” to just OnTrack requests.
“The reason this registration was
so much different,” Kelly said, “ is
that Release 18 [the newest version of
OnTrack], which we upgraded to in
May, has so many more listeners and
the only chance to test it was yesterday.
Release 18 has a lot of benefits with
its architecture, but it took a toll on
performance.”
Kelly and his colleagues expanded
the amount of processes that could run
simultaneously on the site from 128
to 512, borrowing the extra processes
from Datatel.
“ They clamped down on the rest of
the university using the system so that
students could use more,” Fulkerson
said.
At 7:30 a.m. Thursday, 150 to 160
people registered in seven minutes,
according^o Fulkerson, a sign that the
system was working correctly.
Friday morning the time display on
OnTrack was represented in the wrong
time zone. Fulkerson said this did not
affect anyone’s registration, because
the actual time was correct.
Ask@Elon program,
students not asking
Davidson eliminates loans
Allfinancing for students in school provided
through grants and work-study programs
Kaitlin Busch
Reporter
Students used to trek across campus
late at night, in the cold or rain to Belk
Library to ask for help on projects
and papers. Now, because of a new
program, they can find answers to their
questions as easily as they chat with
buddies online.
The easiest way for students to get
help is to add ask@elon to their Instant
Messenger buddy list. Students can ask
questions and get answers through an
instant message, all without leaving
ASK@ELON cont. p. 3
Photo by/ Photographer
Students who do not go to the library
can ask questions online through
AIM for answers with the Ask@Elon
program.
Whitney Bessie
Reporter
Books, room and board, spending
money, meal plans, lab fees and
tuition. The life of a college student
isn’t a cheap one.
Loans can help students finance
college, but they can also leave young
graduates saddled with debt and
anxiety. Currently, college students
across the country borrow $53.8
billion every year.
Davidson College, a small liberal
arts school located near Charlotte,
is trying to alleviate the financial
strain of higher education. This year,
Davidson completely eliminated
student loans from financial aid
packages. Students’ financial need will
be met 100 percent through grants and
on-campus employment.
That’s no small feat for a school
with an all-inclusive yearly tuition of
$40,814.
Dan Freeze, a 2004 Davidson
alum, said the new initiative will take
away some of the stress of the college
experience.
“With room and board and books
and everything, it’s a lot. I was always
wondering, ‘Where is this money
going to come from?”’ Freeze said. “I
struggled.”
STUDENT LOANS cont. p. 3