Course registration for the Fall 2004 semester-which was scheduled for yesterday-has been delayed several days due to technological problems after a mock registration testing session last Friday afternoon, according to University Registrar Mark Hewitt.Hewitt said students will likely be able to register "in a matter of days," but declined to specify further.

According to an e-mail sent by Hewitt last Thursday, the mock registration session, which was designed to see how the new SAGE registration system would work under high usage, took place last Friday between 3:15 and 3:30 p.m.

In another e-mail sent to students that day, Hewitt wrote that the testing session prompted his office to delay registration until further notice in order to, "adjust the servers for the potential load."

Hewitt said that when the mock registration period began, the system ran without problems for five or 10 minutes. He said it was only after that time period that two of the four registration servers started to overload, eventually crashing.

To fix this, Hewitt said that during this past weekend software and hardware were ordered from Cisco Systems that will help the servers distribute the load more evenly.

Hewitt also said that a number of students complained that the registration process lacked appointment times. Students wanted to know when they could register without having to deal with the technological problems resulting from hundreds of people trying to register at the same time. Because his office has now decided to use appointment times, he said reconfiguring the system to accommodate this will also take some more time.

Registration also used to occur in two rounds, but the new system will have three rounds. Students will be able to register for one class in each of the first two rounds, and then will be able to register for the remainder of their desired course-load in the third round.

"The reason for this is that we wanted to give students a fairer chance to register," Hewitt said. "It will allow more students to get into classes that fill up quickly."

Another change to the registration process with the new SAGE system concerns the pass/fail option, which the software does not accommodate. Hewitt said that students wishing to take a course pass/fail will be notified on how to inform the registrar's office of this so that it can be entered into the system manually.

Students who logged onto the SAGE registration system and registered for classes the mock registration were automatically entered in a drawing for one of 10 $100 gift certificates to Lizzy's Ice Cream. Twenty other participants will receive $5 gift certificates to Lizzy's.

Hewitt said winners will be drawn shortly after registration takes place.