The school implemented an online course registration program in January 2002, a change welcomed by most undergraduates. Another program allowed students to see what time their courses met—students could literally add courses to an online “shopping cart,” then print them out at the end of shopping period to be signed by their advisors.

But not all transitions were so fluid.

When the registrar’s office began to rely on online versions of course supplements and exam schedules, students bemoaned the loss of the printed copies they could tote about campus as they shopped for classes.

The Yale Daily News deemed the registrar’s office, in one of many articles highlighting its bureaucratic and technological difficulties, a “Kafka-esque nightmare.”

As the registrar tinkered with the database’s programs to find new ways to improve their services, there were countless reports of lost transcripts, delayed grade reports, overbooked classrooms and even the “disappearance” of several students who returned from a semester in London to find that they were no longer enrolled in the College.

Kane says he expected to be held personally accountable for the problems that sprung from his office.

“The registrar becomes a lightning rod when major system changes are being introduced,” he says. “You can’t hide the things that go wrong because they affect students’ everyday lives. A registrar’s office intersects with faculty and student lives in ways that most people don’t think about too much. When these intersections are disrupted, for whatever reason, they tend to draw a lot of attention.”

But Kane maintains that the transcript errors, due to a combination of personnel problems and kinks in the office’s computer programs, were sour notes in what was otherwise a productive tenure.

According to Kane, the end result, a functional database with programs in place for a variety of online student services, was well worth the wait—and the bad press.

“If I had ever felt that what we were doing wasn’t meaningful, I never would have stayed,” he says. “There were times when it would have been easy to just throw up my hands and walk out. But in the end, you really see all these things come together, and it is immensely gratifying.”

According to his successor, Kane left behind a well oiled machine.

“The office he left behind is in wonderful condition,” says Yale’s acting registrar, Jill Carlton.

A Rosy Future on Garden Street

Harvard’s administrators and students are hoping to avoid the kinds of disruptions in service that plagued Yale’s technological transformation.

Rather than rush through the implementation of generic software, under Becella’s stewardship, Harvard’s registrar office updated their computers at a cautious pace, making sure that students don’t experience the same problems that jarred Yale undergraduates.