After a rocky relationship, students long for old course management system
It’s been a long and rocky relationship between University of Ottawa students and Rabaska, their former online course management system, but it’s finally come to an end.
On Nov. 6, Rabaska abruptly ended its relationship with the U of O student body, and people are having trouble coping with the loss.
“At first I was relieved,” said Aaron Dennis, a second-year law student. “My friends at Carleton were always telling me I could do better.”
However, after a quick Tinder date with uoAccess, the U of O’s new course management system, Dennis was left pining for his old relationship—and he’s not alone.
“This new system just doesn’t get me,” said Amy Ross, a third-year geology student. “No really, it has no idea what classes I’m in. It’s very inconvenient.”
“It forgets everything,” said Toby Thomson, a fourth-year economics student. “It forgot that I had already taken that math prerequisite, no matter how many times I tell it.”
Psychology professor Ian Stone said that this behaviour is typical of breakups between students and their online course management systems.
“It’s just like Freud said, ‘the hardest thing to move on from psychologically is a breakup with a computer system.’”
In the wake of this mass breakup, some students are starting to reminisce about their old relationship with Rabaska.
“Sure I should have appreciated it more,” said Ross. “I complained a lot about the mistakes it made, like not letting me register for my courses on time, but it was just doing its best.”
“We had some good times together,” said Andrew Silver, a fourth-year engineering student, brushing a tear from his cheek. “I really felt that thrill when Rabaska froze and almost made me miss that last spot in my witchcraft elective.”
Some students are refusing to take the breakup sitting down, and are doing everything they can to win Rabaska back.
Archie Brown, a second-year music student and a fan of old-school romance, even went so far as to stand outside Morisset Library with a boombox playing “Hello” by Adele.
“I never really realized how true this song is until now,” he said, adding that he had called the old Rabaska help number at least a thousand times since the system went offline.
“I feel like this new system just isn’t letting me move on,” said Ross. “No really, it deleted the records of like four of my courses and now I can’t graduate.”
“I just wonder what Rabaska is doing right now,” Brown pondered in horror. “What if it’s… registering other students for classes? I don’t think I could deal with that.”
University president Jacques Frémont seemed surprised by the mass outcry.
“They know Rabaska isn’t, like, real right?” he asked in a recent press conference.
Brown, however, couldn’t handle that comment.
“If he knew all the things we shared he wouldn’t say that,” he said. “No one can tell me what we had wasn’t real.”
On the positive side, Pivik has been making a killing on sales of mint chocolate chip ice cream.
