The misclassification of several freshmen as juniors that marred last week’s freshman apartment and suite selection was caused by the registrar’s office, a university official said Tuesday.

“The problem started with the registrar’s database,” said Vice President for Facilities and Student Housing Karen Frank. “The error came through them, not through housing. We don’t know if it happened when the students were admitted or when later registered.”

At least nine freshmen in the School of Nursing and Health Studies were registered as juniors, affording them three housing selection points as opposed to the normal two for freshmen. After the errors were discovered, the Office of Student Housing altered the selection order for the first round of freshmen housing selection, lowering most affected groups’ selection numbers, though raising at least one.

Although multiple freshmen with three selection points said they informed the housing office of the problem months ago, Frank said this was not the case.

“It was the students who had a late pick that came in and brought it to our attention,” she said.

“People wanted us to re-do the lottery, but we did not find this fair,” Frank added.

She said the housing office decided to add six apartments to the selection, allowing six additional groups of freshmen a chance at selecting an apartment.

Frank said residence hall selections were not affected by the problems.

“I am unaware of any problems for the future selections,” Frank said, “but if there are problems, I am not sure what we would do.”

Despite claims that the housing point problem has been resolved, Julia Chang (NHS ’12) said her Housing-at-a-Glance page still lists her as having three selection points.

Frank said her office worked with the Office of the University Registrar to solve the problem. The housing office was unaware of any issues with student’s registration prior to the actual selection, according to Frank.

“We would have directed any student to the registrar’s office if they complained of mistaken registration,” she said.

It is unclear if the improper registration affected any of the freshmen in other ways, such as giving them higher priority during pre-registration. The initial cause of the registration errors with NHS freshmen still remains unknown.

“When I talked to the registrar’s office last, they still weren’t sure and were continuing with their investigation,” Frank said.

The registrar’s office was unavailable for comment for this report.

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