“Happy Halloween ~ Not trying to scare you, but you’ve been emailed about this since late August. You will not be able to register for classes until you complete the online modules.” These are the opening lines of an email students received from Director of Health Promotion, Katie Bean. An email that would create a wave of mass panic and frustration amongst students, right before their Halloweekend festivities.
The online modules that the email is referring to are the Vector training modules that students are required to complete each school year. These trainings go over a range of important measures, including Title IX harassment, hazing, and student conduct, to name a few. Due typically in late September, these trainings often fly under the radar of a lot of students, who are met with the crunch to complete them come registration time. As registration for the Spring approached, the threat of not completing these trainings loomed over students’ heads. Simply because, as the email stated, students who did not complete the trainings were warned that they couldn’t register for classes for the Spring 2025 semester.
This seems rather straightforward, but students who merely missed the initial email about completing these trainings back in August were promised that they would be reminded about these trainings throughout the semester. The problem: they weren’t notified at all.
Students decided to express their frustrations on YikYak, with one user venting:
Thank you Ursinus for emailing me ab the Vector modules I didn’t do literally 4 days before course registration. Said I’ve been getting emails ab it since late Aug and I haven’t gotten shi. Would’ve been nice to have this email like 2+ weeks ago.
The YikYak post had a whopping 70 upvotes within four hours of being published. Comments read, “NO FR,” and “Same haven’t gotten a single email.” Other posts read, “why is this the first time im hearing about ts.” Much of the apparent frustration comes from the fact that students were not emailed at all about these trainings after the first email.
The Grizzly asked Director of Health Promotion Katie Bean for comment: “Here’s what happened. So I sent out one email to all students, from Health Promotion’s email account, in September with a reminder about the Online Wellness Course reminding upperclassmen they will have 2 modules and reminding first years they have 5 modules. I sent another email to all students right before fall break and encouraged people to use the fall break to finish up the modules if they didn’t yet as they were due soon.”
About 60% of all upperclassmen, according to Katie Bean, had reportedly completed the Vector Trainings come the email sent on Halloween. But to her surprise, the Vector emails to remind students hadn’t been working effectively.
“I started getting responses back right away from students saying they did not get any emails all semester long as I mentioned in my email. Each student who emailed, I checked, and they were right. I can see on the back end in the Vector platform the dates of all the emails that were sent out – and for some reason, many students did not get those automated emails. Even more odd, it wasn’t everyone. Some emailed me back after that email saying thanks for the reminder and did it and I checked those people, and they DID get emails all semester long.”
“I am working with Vector to figure out what happened and why so it doesn’t happen again. My apologies to you and everyone who encountered this issue. I am really glad I sent out that final reminder so that people could see it and it started conversations and people were talking about it. Right now we are at 83% of upperclassmen non-athletes complete and 89% of upperclassmen athletes complete – so we’re STILL missing a good bit of people.”
Registration is slowly wrapping up for all classes. Yet as the semester winds down, students are once again reminded to do their Vector trainings, if they haven’t already done so this year!