Technical glitches vexed a new online service used by more than 2,700 students to select on-campus housing during the first three days of the room selection process.

At John Muir College, which felt the brunt of the problems, the glitches kept residence hall spaces inaccessible for more than two hours after the start of residential registration on May 18. The hitch led angered students to petition and ask the college’s Residential Life officials to address the concerns of students dissatisfied with the process.

“We’re not placing blame, but we’re taking responsibility [for some of the problems]. For a first-time system, we learned something, that’s for sure,” Muir Resident Dean Pat Danylyshyn-Adams said.

The college’s staff first learned of the error when a student, attempting to secure a room in a residence hall, came into the office at approximately 10 a.m., two hours after the room selection process began, Danylyshyn-Adams said. Afterward, the staff contacted technical personnel at Housing and Dining Services, who fixed the problem within 30 minutes.

“Essentially, what had happened is that we didn’t realize that our residence hall space wasn’t up for selection,” she said. “My goal at that point was to get it working as quickly as we could.”

In the meantime, groups of students unable to find space in Muir’s apartments were forced to choose housing in other colleges, according to Muir Sophomore Senator Lulu Ge, the author of a petition asking Danylyshyn-Adams and other staff members to host a forum on the issue. With all apartments at Muir partially filled by 9:15 a.m., Ge’s party chose to select housing at the Pepper Canyon apartments in Sixth College.

“We would’ve liked to go into the residence halls, if it wasn’t for the glitch,” said Muir freshman Eric Donovan, whose group found itself in a similar position and ended up choosing spaces at Pepper Canyon as well.

On May 17, students at Sixth College also faced technical difficulties when the room-selection Web site displayed incorrect responses to a question on the students’ preference form used for selecting roommates. However, the error was fixed within the first hour of room selection, according to Residential Dean Marciano Perez.

Other residential staff did not return calls seeking comment and Stacy Travis, a Housing and Dining analyst, said she could not issue a statement on any other problems because selection is still going on. However, students at the other four colleges said they did not experience any major problems.

Danylyshyn-Adams attributed the technical mishaps to the untested nature of the system, which replaced in-person selection for the first time.

In the past, students signed up for housing with their roommates and met with residential staff at times assigned by lottery.

Under the new procedure, students applied for housing individually, receiving a personal access code and five-minute appointment time, shared with several other people. Individuals within groups who received the best time then registered for all of the other group members, inserting all of the access codes in a special page at the beginning of the process.

Students said they were upset that they could not change their rooms after confirming their selection, even though the residential glitch keeping them from their preferred housing was fixed.

Despite these problems, Sze’s current housemate, Muir sophomore John Perry, said he found the online selection method much easier in many respects.

In spring 2003, Perry said his group came close to losing its opportunity to choose a place of residence because classes and bad driving conditions kept several members of his group from attending their selection meeting with housing staff.

Danylyshyn-Adams, who has been fielding phone calls and letters from disgruntled students, said Muir would host two sessions during which those students would be given an opportunity to swap rooms.

“We’re going to be as flexible as we can with our room changes,” she said.

— Additional reporting by Bryan Tsao, Associate News Editor