Financial Aid needs Band-Aid
Campus Times
March 20, 1998
How typical is it that so many students at the University of La Verne
have problems with the Office of Financial Aid?
The answers to this issue lies directly in the hands of those supposedly
prestigious individuals that have been hired to help us every year.
These are the people that hide behind the desks in small offices of
Financial Aid. Students that want to see them are guarded off by secretaries/guards
that must have one heck of a job. Since I have so much trouble seeing them,
I hope maybe they can read this instead.
For approximately two years now, Financial Aid has given me a share
of mistakes they have made and excuses of why my loans do not come through.
There was the time when my award letter did not arrive until school started,
and the day they told me I would get work study, which I haven't gotten
since last spring.
In my most recent case, an outside $5,000 loan was denied. The reason:
because ULV got pulled from the loan company. When I called the loan company
in fear of being dropped at midterm, they told me that it wasn't my fault.
Actually, it is the fault of the Financial Aid Office. It seems the department
allocated too many loans to too many students. For this, ULV takes the fall
and all of the accounts, mine included, go tumbling down also.
This is just one of countless examples, and I know that this repetitive
subject is too broad for me to explore. That is why I have chosen not to
call up anyone from the administration, not to mention they are quite lazy
about returning phone calls.
Instead, I want to give a voice to the voiceless. I think we are all
fed up with financial aid, (those of you who are not freshmen, of course.
The Financial Aid Office can be quite nice to the unsuspecting freshmen).
As for the rest of us undergraduates, I hear complaints almost always
about big debts many students have to pay Student Accounts. In some cases,
this is because Financial Aid messed up somehow.
And if Financial Aid contests this one, let them explain why former
Director of Financial Aid Bob Peters and former Financial Aid adviser Ken
Lira are now gone? They were either fired, laid-off or simply quit. Something
obviously must be wrong.
My purpose for complaining is to let students know they are not alone.
I have friends that cannot transfer, study abroad or apply to graduate schools
because they have a back balance and cannot send their transcripts. Somehow,
it all comes back to a mistake in the Office in the back of Woody Hall that
no one can get into.
Before students step into the classroom, the lab or the dorms, they
have very important business to take care of. They need the money first.
How soon we forget, until Student Accounts reminds us and we cannot register
for those important courses.
If only the people in this department realized how important they really
are in the eyes of the students that stare down the hall of the Financial
Aid Office, hoping to catch a glimpse of the person holding their file and
their future in their hands. The professors, the administrators, the directors
-- yes, they are important, but what use do they have if there are no students
that can afford to use them?
As for me, I have to go through the whole process of getting another
loan but I know it was not because I did not apply for one. Yes, it is my
problem that I need money, but it is Financial Aid's problem that they are
still unable to get their act together.
Erica Aguilar, a junior journalism major, is editorial director of
the Campus Times. She can be reached by e-mail at aguilare@ulv.edu.
