Registration for the Fall 2025 semester started with mass stress and anxiety among students when they realized that LORA, Loyola’s Self-Service Student Account and Payment System, had crashed, rendering them unable to register for classes despite having been cleared to. This mostly affected seniors that were registering on this date, as other undergraduate students were scheduled to register later in the week.
“Thankfully the delay in LORA did not affect my classes, yet I have some senior friends who had issues,” senior political science major Ella Jupiter said.
Although the problem was eventually resolved and students were able to continue registering, frustration increased as students reflected on how this wasn’t the first incident to occur in their history of registering.
“This was extra frustrating because registration happens at 8:30 and I have an 8:00 am. In my class where I am not allowed to use technology, I had to step out to register and the website did not even work,” Jupiter said. “Although technological problems happen and it is no one’s fault, this was my eighth time registering for classes and problems like this occur regularly.”
Despite the conflicts on the website, Jupiter hadn’t expressed frustration towards advisors since she knew they couldn’t do much to solve the problem from their end. According to her, the advising and planning are incredibly helpful to students, but the technology is faulty and leaves room for error.
“I know Loyola works hard to make sure every student is set up for success and that is one of many reasons I love this university,” Jupiter said. “At the same time, I think the registration system could use a few upgrades in order to minimize potential problems.”
Although the issue of LORA crashing was the most prevalent, there were also additional issues that undergraduate students faced regarding the website. Alunda Minerva, a junior majoring in Theatre Arts, faced problems with her classes being counted as an honors student.
Minerva took Latin American Literature, and because it counted as an English course, she was initially informed that it would fulfill her English requirement. However, when she went to register for a class, she was unable to due to LORA saying she hadn’t taken her english prerequisite.
“It’s hard to work with the LORA system as an honors student because of all the loopholes and workarounds that make our courseload different from non-honors students,” Minerva said.
Because of her inability to register, Minerva went to Christina DiMaggio, her honors advisor, who was able to help her figure out the problem regarding her prerequisite.
“She got back to me very quickly,” Minerva said. “She had sent out an email that morning reminding students to include their student ID number in their help request emails, and that is why I felt comfortable emailing her. I knew she was awake and ready to offer help.”
However, even though she was able to find the correct advisor to help her, Minerva expressed her frustration regarding how many advisors she needs to get through to properly register.
“The more factors that make up your program here—honors, minor, et cetera—the more advisors one has, and I think knowing who to email for what is an issue I had personally,” Minerva said.
