Following the updated procedures, many students experienced problems with course enrolment on August 5.

After reports of ACORN not working on that date, the official U of T ACORN Twitter account encouraged students to enrol with ROSI.

Ana Fonseca, second-year Neuroscience and Physiology student, told The Varsity that she was not able to log into ACORN until two hours after her start time; she was able to log in to ROSI 45 minutes after her start time and enrol in a course.

After logging into ACORN later on, Fonseca discovered that she was not enroled in her course, perhaps due to a malfunction in ROSI; by this time the waitlist had gone up by 20 spots. Regarding her overall experience, Fonseca said, “It was so much more stress than it should have been.”

Jay Zuo, second-year Computer Science student, said that U of T had “failed us again.” He said both ACORN and ROSI were unresponsive for him from approximately 10:30 am to 12:00 pm.

According to Zuo, there was a glitch in ROSI that may have given some students an unfair advantage over others while enroling in courses: “If you clicked the enrol button repeatedly on ROSI, then click any section on the grey sidebar, six out of 10 times you will be enroled in said course, while others wait fruitlessly.”

U of T Media Relations Director Althea Blackburn-Evans commented on the problems students faced during course enrolment: “Unfortunately, efforts to alleviate potential overload on ACORN didn’t have the desired effect,” she explained.

The university was planning to have ACORN permanently replace ROSI by late 2016; Blackburn-Evans, told The Varsity that “[ROSI] will remain active until we have a good solution in place.”

Blackburn-Evans noted one positive outcome of the staggered enrolment times: students were able to contact staff directly when they encountered problems, as the 9:00 am start time aligned with the start of the business day.

“We’re very focused on improving the enrolment experience for students, and Arts & Science will continue to work with the ACORN team to ensure the new system is stable during heavy enrolment periods,” said Blackburn-Evans.