Published 2011-01-25T21:35:00Z”/>
Alexander Seymour
Hundreds of students were welcomed back to campus with the nightmare scenario of being simultaneously dropped from all of their classes as spring semester approached,
As of Jan. 18, 474 students had been dis-enrolled from their spring semester classes via the university’s early drop protocol, said Jean Irving, university registrar for the Office of Records and Registration.
The early drop procedure takes effect on students who have not paid any portion of their tuition by a week after Dec. 9, Irving said. A second and final drop occurs Dec. 21 for those who have not paid in full.
While there is nothing stopping a student from paying full tuition and re-enrolling even after the second drop period, being dropped can be very inconvenient, said junior kinesiology major Jackie Short, who was dropped from her classes.
If classes are listed as full, which is often the case after being dropped from a popular course, students have to try to crash a class and convince professors to make extra room for them, Irving said.
For students unable to convince their professors to let them re-enroll in overcrowded classes, the consequences mean lost time and paying for an extra semester of tuition.
“If I can’t get these classes back, I will definitely be at least a semester behind,” Short said.
The 474 drops are cited as mostly due to a failure on students’ part to read notification e-mails sent by the university, Irving said.
As of Nov. 10, the university had sent out four e-mails reminding student to pay tuition, said Anna Magana, assistant director of Student Financial Services, in an e-mail interview. The first of these notifications were sent out a month before the tuition payment deadline, and student account balance information was always available through the CSU Portal.
But a failure to read e-mails is not the only cause of these drops, Short said. Dis-enrollment may also occur when financial aid sources and the university have difficulty communicating.
“There was an issue with the acceptance of financial aid,” she said. “I paid the difference between tuition dues and the aid amount, but Chico failed to recognize that I had been accepted for aid until after I had been dropped.”
When it comes to financial aid, student recipients are advised to double check they have been accepted for aid on a semester basis, not an annual basis, said Registration Supervisor Michelle Holmes.
“That’s not what happened in my case, and the university never offered a real answer on why an error had occurred with my financial aid payment,” Short said.
Of the 474 students dropped this period, approximately a half dozen have occurred accidentally, Holmes said.
“If it was a university error, we will contact departments to see if they’ll help us re-enroll students,” Irving said.
In order to avoid being dropped, the Student Financial Services office encourages students to familiarize themselves with due dates via the online portal and their campus e-mail, Magana said. Students whose tuition is paid by their parents or guardian can also sign up for the new Parent Portal, which allows parents to view and pay campus dues independently.
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