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Vol.7, No 40, November 8, 1999 
[news]

Voice registration glitches bite CSULB

By Kristopher Hanson
Daily Forty-Niner

Charles Eldred was looking forward to using his priority registration status when he paid for next semester's tuition.

The Cal State Long Beach senior went to Brotman Hall Wednesday, paid the required fees, got a receipt and figured everything was taken care of.

"I needed to be able to get into the classes as soon as possible," said Eldred, an information systems major.

Later in the afternoon, he used the Voice Response Registration to get his classes, but the message system told him he had a hold.

The voice on the other end claimed he could not register until he paid tuition.

After trying and being denied a few more times, he figured his money had not been punched in the computer yet.

The next morning, VRR still denied him registration.

He became worried and called the help line to determine why his payment hadn't been accepted.

"The woman told me there was a Y2K problem," Eldred said.

She explained to him that his balance had been misplaced in the computer system and his payment had been forwarded.

"My balance had been applied to 2019," Eldred said, meaning he couldn't register until that year.

A representative in the Business Accounts Payable office assured him personnel would clear the hold by manually overriding the computer, making him eligible for registration.

However, business office officials later denied having year-2000 trouble.

"This is absolutely not a Y2K problem," said Leslie Wolbers, manager of Student Account Services.

"The situation is totally under control."

The computer glitch Eldred experienced affected priority-list students registering for both the winter session and spring semester, Wolbers said.

Numbering codes were read wrong by the system, causing it to read the winter session 2000 as winter session 2019, Wolbers said.

"This affected very few students," she said.

After learning of the problem, steps were immediately taken to remedy the situation, including contacting the company who sold the university the computer registration system.

Wolbers wanted to dispel any rumors circulating that course registration had been hit by the Y2K bug.

When students go to register today, "there will be no problem," she said. For those already affected, "we can override the system."

 

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