All right, not everyone. The state’s Board of Elections says that to qualify for a voter registration card, you must live at your present New York address for 30 days, not be in prison, or on parole for a felony conviction and not be adjudged mentally incompetent by a court. Given that Mr. Levy has a voter registration card, we can probably assume that he is not criminally insane. Or rather, that he is neither an ex-con nor insane.

But big deal. Many people are neither nuts, nor onetime criminals. In fact, some of the Haggler’s best friends are neither nuts, nor onetime criminals. The compelling proof of residency here is not Mr. Levy’s sanity or lack of a felony past. It’s his attendance at Kew-Forest, and one presumes that his performance at that institution helped persuade the admissions office at Baruch to admit him.

So why was Baruch hassling Mr. Levy for documentation that he really didn’t need to produce? The school’s position seems a classic example of “We screwed up. What are you going to do about it?” Highly annoying.

The Haggler contacted Christina Latouf, a spokeswoman for the college. She needed a day or two to figure out what had happened, and then she wrote something rather remarkable. In an e-mail, she said that the school not only took responsibility for stumbling blocks inserted between Mr. Levy and his refund, but also that changes would be made so that such errors don’t happen again. Those changes include working with the City University of New York — of which Baruch is part — to review out-of-state designations.

“Further, if a student’s initial documentation indicates they have always been a New York State resident, we will no longer request additional documentation,” Ms. Latouf wrote.

Do you hear that, dear readers? It is the sweet sound of modest reform, a noise as rare as the quack of the Scaly Sided Merganser. (It’s a very scarce duck, according to the Internet, and the Haggler has no idea if it quacks. But you get the point.) The pleasures of consumer interventions in this space usually come in single servings — like those pudding containers that you ate in grade school. But Baruch is actually going to change its system.