Students should not suffer when dealing with bursar

Editor,

I know many people must have had some kind of unpleasant experience at the Bursar's Office, but I think mine might very well be the worst, most persistent mistreatment a student can get.

Ever since I came to UNM four years ago to pursue my Ph.D. in the romance languages, I would always get an account statement from the Bursar's Office that would invariably say that I owed UNM at least a couple of thousand dollars. More than once they charged me a service fee for not paying the amount on time!

I have full assistantship from UNM, so I do not have to pay for my dissertation hours out of my pocket. It is part of the contract I have with this university: I teach classes, I get a tuition waiver. How hard is it, in this technological day and age, to have this information on record? Not hard, I would think.

But every single semester, I get account statements that tell me I am delinquent in my payments. I do not care if my department "has not sent the proper paperwork" as it claims every time. I do not care if it has not updated its records as someone tells me every time I show the outlandish billing statement.

All I want is some kind of reassurance that I will be able to complete my graduate work without fear of being disenrolled for not paying pseudo-fees. I know this matter can be resolved with some intelligent computer programming or database integration.

Is it too much to ask from UNM and the Bursar's Office that there will be no more account (mis)statements?

Fernanda Ferreira

International student

and teaching assistant

Department of Spanish and Portuguese