Changes made to the class purge for coming semester
The purge is coming Dec. 19, and the Registrar’s Office wants students to understand the new policy that has ensued as of fall 2005.
The purge is designed to drop students classes if they haven’t paid their fees by the purge date. This opens up many classes for students who have paid and are waiting to get into other classes they weren’t able to before.
The old method was an initial purge, and then the system purged daily any classes added after the purge date if they weren’t paid for. With the old system, the Registrar’s Office had the capability to drop just the added classes that weren’t paid for, but with the new system, all classes would be dropped if there was any unpaid balance, were there to be a purge every day.
“Since Banner has become the system used by the entire school, the old policy of purging classes doesn’t have the same capabilities that it had with the old system,” said John Mortensen, USU registrar. “With the new system, it’s all or nothing.”
He said this change has been going on since fall of 2005, and students are still having a hard time understanding the change. There have been students, he said, who are adding classes to their schedules and when they don’t want them anymore, they expect the system to drop it because they haven’t paid for the class.
“It was a lot easier with the old one. It was a reminder to students to pay their fees,” Mortensen said. “We just don’t have the same resources.”
Bill Jensen, the associate registrar, said “The main difference with the new system is that we had a daily purge with the old one. When people added a course, if they didn’t pay by the end of the day, that course would be dropped, but with the new one, we can’t do that because all classes will be dropped.”
“I’d rather go back to the old one, but we don’t have the capability with the new Banner system,” Jensen said.
Mortensen said, “We just want to get the word out to make it easier on both students and faculty.”
He said last school year at the end of spring semester, there were some students that thought they wanted to take summer classes and then decided they wanted a break. With the old system in their minds, they didn’t drop the classes. Since the banner was implemented, he said, the system will no longer drop a student’s classes after the initial purge, so they were still registered for the classes they didn’t drop.
When the students went to register for fall semester, they found they had a hold and couldn’t register, he said. Not only did they owe money for summer semester, he said, but they had Fs in all the summer classes they were registered for but didn’t attend.
“There’s one initial purge, and then it’s up to the students to drop their own classes,” Bill Jensen, associate registrar said.
At the beginning of every semester, he said, the Registrar’s Office has a huge line of people wanting to talk about some problems when they really don’t need to. He said they want people to be able to help themselves, and most of the problems can be resolved online in just a few minutes.
Jensen said if students already know they aren’t going to be able to pay on time or pay all of their fees by the purge date, there are payment plans to help them stay in their registered classes.
“We probably have about a thousand people that do payment plans or installments each semester,” said Jensen. “The purge is beneficial to those students who are hoping that people don’t pay on time so they can get into the classes they need.”
“The moral is students need to take responsibility for dropping their own classes. The system can’t do it anymore,” Mortensen said.
The purge is on Dec. 19 at 5 p.m. Students don’t have until midnight to pay for their classes.
-shanmccl@cc.usu.edu