Tele-BEARS System Slip Hurts Some Students

After being barred from a majority of their required classes, many Boalt Hall School of Law students questioned why their Tele-BEARS appointments were always so late. In fact, a programming error had been giving some students an unfair advantage for the past four years.

Due to a system malfunction affecting UC Berkeley Tele-BEARS registration times, students with lower identification numbers were more likely to have earlier registration appointments. These appointments, however, were supposed to be randomly distributed, said Acting Registrar Walter Wong.

Student identification numbers indicate how early a student applied to UC Berkeley, whether for undergraduate or graduate school, Wong said.

The error especially affected graduate students who had not applied to UC Berkeley as undergraduates, as they had a more difficult time getting into the classes they want.

Most UC Berkeley undergraduates who now attend Boalt retained their original identification numbers and subsequently had earlier Tele-BEARS appointments.

"(UC Berkeley undergraduates) comprise the largest percentage of any school represented in each entering class," Edward G. Tom, director of admissions, said in an e-mail.

Out-of-state graduate students, in particular, are less likely to have been undergraduates. At Boalt, 108 students in the incoming 269-member Boalt class are not California residents, Tom said.

Students with priority or special arrangements for Tele-BEARS such as athletes and first-semester freshman were not affected by the error, Wong said.

The programming error was fixed last week and will not affect next semester's Tele-BEARS appointment times, Wong said.

Problems with the system were noted when the results of an informal survey of 10 percent of Boalt students showed a correlation between early registration times and a previous association with the campus, said Boalt Registrar Mary Kelleher-Jones.

She said complaints about the lack of random allocation in the past were rejected by the campus registrar because no one suspected something was wrong with the programming.

"I do know there were complaints in the past but nothing was behind them," she said.

The problem occurred four years ago when the campus changed its student services software, which did not properly retain some of the old software's code.

"Apparently the randomization did not convert (to the new software)," Wong said.

Law school student Adam Trott said he was not surprised about the error because many of his fellow students had difficulty getting into the classes they wanted, though he was largely unaffected.

"I got lucky because I applied to Cal as an undergraduate," he said.

Tags: BOALT HALL SCHOOL OF LAW, TELEBEARS