Thanks for looking into it. I just added a couple more concerns to the post:

* The totally bizarre responses that requests received. For instance, my co-instructor's request (who in her request included a link to the course and her linkedin, and who has a Duke math PhD, worked as a quant, and was a data scientist at Uber) was denied, whereas some students who provided no justification were accepted, on the same day!

* Why some of our students, who were fully paid-up, suddenly found their access cut off in the middle of the course.