Dukes fret over enrollment troubles

By MICHAEL RUSSO The Breeze

The time for course enrollment can be “a weird experience,” as sophomore Carter King puts it. A system-wide outage on MyMadison — like the one that occurred Tuesday, when students like King stormed the portal simultaneously to sign up for classes — can make the situation evolve from weird to worrisome.

King, a music education major, was one of many scheduled to enroll Tuesday at 7:30 a.m. However, system overload reportedly caused the portal to run at slow speeds, then eventually, a full outage occurred. Ginny Cramer, associate director of communications and deputy spokesperson, said in an email Wednesday that JMU Information Technology (IT) resolved the issue at 8:16 a.m, though JMU’s IT webpage wasn’t updated until 8:43 a.m.

“I just refreshed and refreshed — a bunch of trial and error,” King said. “I thought it was an individual problem, but then everyone on group chats and stuff started talking about it. And so, I just waited.”

When MyMadison started functioning again for King, he said, he could enroll in the classes he needed for the fall and “everything was fine.” However, King said the possibility of a repeat occasion could spell trouble due to the course load of his program.

“Us music majors, we have a lot of classes we need to take,” King said. “If I can’t get in a class, I have to basically swap up my entire schedule. So I mean, it’s stressful, and knowing that these crashes can happen is worrying.”

In a poll released on The Breeze’s Instagram shortly after the MyMadison outage, 77 of 91 respondents (85%) said they experienced enrollment issues with the system.

Additionally, students took to Sidechat, a social media platform where users can post anonymously. Comments about enrollment ranged from sillier thoughts like, “Changing the instagram bio from ’24 to ’25 after that academic advisor meeting” and “HOW DID IT ALREADY CRASH” to more frustrated statements, such as, “Me being a senior next semester thinking enrollment wasn’t going to be that stressful” and “BROOOO, I’m going to be a senior next year, pleeease work my Madison. This system sucks.” see ENROLLMENT, page 4

Lone freshman starter shines for No. 4 JMU lacrosse

By KADIEN BRIDGES The Breeze

The JMU lacrosse team stands together as it awaits its starting lineup to be called. Upperclassmen’s names are cheered on as they take the field. Then, No. 20, freshman attacker Maddie Epke, who’s started in all 14 games this season, makes her way to center field — ready to perform.

Epke has started strong in her JMU career. With only three conference games left in the Dukes’ season, Epke has the fourthmost points on the team with 29, behind attackers redshirt junior Isabella Peterson (71), senior Tai Jankowski (55) and junior Katelyn Morgan (38). She was also named the American Athletic Conference (AAC) Player of the Week on Feb. 27 and Freshman of the Week on April 10.

As she played in the midfield during her high school lacrosse seasons, Epke said her transition into not only college lacrosse but an attacking position for JMU has been an exciting opportunity. Epke is the only starting freshman on the No. 4 team in the nation.

JMU lacrosse head coach Shelley Klaes said she called Epke over the summer to see if she’d be interested in switching to the “X” position for the Dukes, which means Epke would help facilitate the offense from behind the goal.

Klaes said she asked Epke to put in some work toward her new position during the summer with the help of her mother, who was Epke’s lacrosse coach in high school.

“I’ve been really impressed with how she’s been able to do this despite the lack of experience,” Klaes said. “She’s a freshman that’s helping to lead an offensive unit behind the goal. She’s done a really good job.”

Though she said she came into the program nervous — as was every freshman on the team, she added — Epke said she’s built the necessary confidence for her new role because the team’s full of love for one another and it’s constantly building each other up.

Morgan — who starts alongside Epke on the Dukes’ offense — praised Epke’s quickness, explosiveness and vision. Morgan said the move from high school to college can be tough, but Epke has found her role on the team and adjusted well.

. see LACROSSE, page 18

MACROCK music festival continues growth, celebrates biggest year yet

By K. MAUSER The Breeze

Pale Fire Brewing reached full capacity by 9 p.m., and a long line began to grow Friday — late into the night.

This was only the first of two nights for MACROCK, Harrisonburg’s nonprofit “annual DIY music festival,” according to the official MACROCK website.

Junior Annie McGowan said each of the festival’s venues last year had reached full capacity on both nights. As one of the program’s three head coordinators, McGowan said this year was probably MACROCK’s “biggest year in recent history.”

By the end of the weekend, McGowan said MACROCK sold 261 presale tickets, which don’t include the complimentary tickets given to each band or the ones sold in person. They also said MACROCK’s Instagram followers had tripled within the past year, which indicated it reached a much bigger crowd online.

On the festival’s Instagram page, many of the bands were highlighted that performed over the weekend. Out of all the 383 bands that applied, McGowan said the festival committee hand-selected 77 bands to perform in this year’s MACROCK.

McGowan said most of the bands that played this year go through an application process where the committee blindly listens to each artist’s music and judges it based solely on their music.

McGowan and the festival committee each listen to one minute of the three songs each artist sends in, McGowan said. If the artist’s rating is above a 2.5 on the five-point scale, they said the bands move on to the next round of selection necessary to play in MACROCK.”

“We have some great bands coming,” McGowan said. “I think this is the most talented group we’ve had so far.” see MACROCK, page 10 harrisonburgmill.com

One of the festival’s bands, lonelyisaneyesore, said this was its first time performing out of its Boston home town.