By Viviana Pruett-Saratan
Staff Writer
On Monday, Oct. 20, 2025, Delaware County Community College students, along with many other students around the country, experienced an outage of the learning platform Canvas.
When students and faculty attempted to log into their Canvas account, these words appeared: “Canvas is experiencing issues due to an ongoing AWS incident.” For most of the day, no one was able to access course material.
The website, as well as other internet platforms like Snapchat, Venmo, and Amazon Prime, also shut down. All are part of Amazon Web Services. According to AWS, the error occurred due to “increased error rates and latencies for multiple Amazon Web Services in the US-EAST-1 Region.” Instructure, the parent company of Canvas, provided updates throughout the day on its website. According to The Atlantic’s reporting: “The incident marked at least the third time in the past five years that Amazon Web Services’ Northern Virginia facilities contributed to a widespread internet outage.”
Many students and faculty at DCCC had to work around the inconvenience by extending assignment deadlines and teaching without the use of Canvas. Some students found themselves anxious, fearing they would turn in assignments late or be unable to prepare for their classes.
Pavneet Kaur, a DCCC student, complained, “I tried to submit my presentation for my class and I couldn’t. It was so frustrating. I had to email my professor.”
Other students saw it as a brief break from schoolwork, relieved that some assignments and exams were postponed.
Students from other schools across the country went to Instagram, posting content relating to the situation. Whitman College’s Instagram page posted a reel with the words “POV: you’re finally about to lock-in but canvas is shut down nationwide,” showing a student walking away from their laptop with “My Way” by Frank Sinatra playing in the background. The video made light of the situation, satirically expressing the relief the student felt.
Canvas was restored for most users by 7:16 p.m., and by 7:45 p.m., the website was fully back online for students and faculty. Amazon Web Services has resolved most of the issues related to the service. The AWS Health Dashboard has labeled the operational issue as resolved; however, some related websites may be experiencing minor problems that are in the process of being repaired.
The Communitarian 
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