Posted on 02/22/2006 10:21:12 AM PST by Dog Gone
Bettendorf native Adam Feeney received an e-mail message Saturday morning at his home in Dalian, China, that left the 25-year-old “overjoyed,” his father, Mark, said. The joy, however, was short-lived.
The message Adam Feeney received was sent Friday, California time, to thousands of fall applicants to the University of California-Berkeley law school, congratulating them “once more” on their early acceptance. It also invited them to an alumni-sponsored event at the prestigious school in northern California.
“He called Friday night, sort of floating on air that he had been accepted to Berkeley,” said Mark Feeney, a copy editor at the Quad-City Times. He adding that his son wants to study international law and already has been accepted at the University of Iowa. Adam also has applied to Duke University and some other law schools.
“We told him how proud we were of him,” Mark Feeney said. “Berkeley is probably a 1A school.”
What they found a bit disconcerting was that Adam had not received an official letter telling him he was admitted to Berkeley, his father said.
But Adam said he figured that maybe the letter had been sent to Bettendorf or that it was on its long journey through the Chinese mail system, Mark Feeney said.
Just a few hours later, the truth arrived.
The e-mail was a blunder committed by Edward Tom, the admissions director of Berkeley’s Boalt Hall School of Law.
Tom apologized profusely for the error Monday. He intended to send invitations to a private, alumni-sponsored event to about 500 people who have been granted early admission to Boalt. But one misguided and irretrievable computer mouse click sent the message to the list of applicants for fall admission.
He “immediately” composed a second e-mail, correcting and explaining the error, then followed that up with yet another message Saturday morning that offered a “more fulsome explanation and apology.”
Adam Feeney has been working and studying in China since the autumn 2002. He went there originally to teach English to middle and high school students who already had been introduced to the language, his father said.
“He sent us an e-mail at about 3 a.m. Saturday saying he was bummed out over the screwup that they’d made,” Mark Feeney said. “He didn’t want to call us and wake us up.
“He was especially curious that a school in Silicon Valley, and a great technical school at that, could screw up like that,” he added.
Those who received the e-mail are still in the running for Boalt, Tom stressed. The law school has yet to send any denial letters, and the real acceptance notification should be complete by the end of March. The law school typically admits between 750 and 850 applicants a year, he said.
While disappointed, Adam Feeney thinks he still has a shot at Boalt, his father said.
“It was exciting for a couple of hours to know that he’d been accepted,” Mark Feeney said, adding that he and his wife, Nancy, are hopeful and that their son still has a chance to get in.
“It’s not like this has turned him against the college in any way,” he said. “He’s just sort of disappointed this whole thing happened.”
I smell a lawsuit.
To get into Berkeley, I think the main requirement is that you could NOT pass an FBI background investigation.
LOL! Kind of ironic isn't it?
Well, it IS Bezerkeley, after all. It's not in the Silicon Valley, though.
I got news: Beserkeley is in the East Bay, not Silicon Valley.
(Three guesses as to what my next job is...ugh...)
Ought to be familiar with the incompetence that thrives in our schools by now.
heh heh...
I swear - parents are gonna sue. Their kids "self-esteem" has taken a hit. The little darlings been "scarred" by the "trauma" of "rejection".
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA.....wait. I feel terrible. I really shouldn't laugh...(snicker)
LOL!!! ;-)
ping
As someone sweating through the lawschool admissions process right now, this is the kind of thing that could push you over the edge =P
Well, the good news is that they caught it pretty quickly. Probably not enough time to notify other law schools they had applied to that they were withdrawing their applications.
The law school admission process can be nerve-wracking, but it doesn't even begin to compare to taking the bar exam. Good luck!
Wouldn't have hurt to pick a better term than fulsome.
Fulsome: buttery: unpleasantly and excessively suave or ingratiating in manner or speech; "buttery praise"; "gave him a fulsome introduction"; "an oily sycophantic press agent"; "oleaginous hypocrisy"; "smarmy self-importance"; "the unctuous Uriah Heep"; "soapy compliments"
Must be slang for "more complete" in the Quad Cities region, I reckon.
Perhaps I'm wrong; maybe his more fulsome report began, "Even though our earlier erroneous post must surely caused you some great initial joy and sudden sadness upon realizing that, even with your wonderful qualifications that there must be some ...
"Wouldn't have hurt to pick a better term than fulsome."
True, but this time I think that the inadvertent malapropism is spot on. It's pretty fulsome to get an e-mail reversing an earlier acceptance e-mail, even if the explanation in said e-mail is very fully articulated.
I wonder how many of them immediately canceled applications to other schools?
I wouldn't rule out a lawsuit, since our society thinks that is the answer to every mistake, real or imagined. However, I think any lawsuit will get tossed pretty quickly. The error was unintended, and it was corrected promptly. It is hard to see what the basis for liability could be, and what damages could any recipient of the e-mail have, other than disappointment? The recipients would not have had time to yank applications to other law schools or otherwise change their positions in reliance on the e-mail message. No hurt, no foul.
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