OUR VIEW: Registrar is the biggest hang up to graduation

Graduating with a degree from a university is usually thought of as the culmination of years and years of schooling and hard work. It’s needed to get a job, support a family and get into graduate school. As students, we’ve gone through some pretty horrible things to get that diploma, including thousands of hours of homework, ornery professors and really long nights.

That is all worth it, though. But, there is a difference between those necessary evils and some unnecessary evils that the university is inflicting on soon-to-be graduates. Namely: The graduation process. It’s horrible, to put it mildly.

The absurdity of actually having to apply for a graduation application can be overlooked. But, the promise that packets would be available on certain dates, when they are not, cannot be. Most awful, though, are the blank stares that Registrar’s Office employees give seniors – students, who day after day ask for their packet – that should have been available 10 days before – but is held up for a different reason every day.

We understand that thousands of students are graduating this spring and that the packet application system is new and still being experimented with.

But, a word to the Registrar’s Office: Don’t make seniors pay the $100 late fee who received their packet from you too late to complete. And, don’t make the process of appealing the $100 late fee so difficult that seniors want to drop out one semester before graduating.

A word to seniors: If you applied on time, but won’t get your packets in on time because of the university’s delays, don’t let the university get away with it. Appeal the decision and make some noise. If enough people do, they’ll listen.