As Ohio University’s final quarter comes to a close, some students are finding themselves unable to schedule for Fall Semester classes because of financial holds from outstanding Campus Care balances even though their MyOHIO pages say they owe nothing.
“I lost one of my classes I was planning on taking in order to graduate in time,” said Travis Neal, a sophomore studying biological sciences. “I’m really upset.
They punish us by holding our registration time so we miss out on scheduling for classes.”
On May 9, Neal and hundreds of other OU students received an email from Campus Care that read, “On Friday May 11th, if you have an unpaid Campus Care balance on your MyOHIO account, a financial hold will be placed on your student account.”
Tonya Burdette, director of Campus Care, said the balances are from as early as July 1, 2011, adding that about 2,500 students owe the health center money.
Burdette said part of the problem was Campus Care’s transition between payment systems — from Student Information System to CASHNet — in March 2012.
“When the university switched (Campus Care) over from PeopleSoft, they didn’t interphase the billing correctly with the new system,” Burdette said. “It makes it appear that they don’t have a balance when they do, and we are looking forward to getting that fixed ASAP.”
John Kemerer, medical director of Campus Care, said the problems with holds are caused by a computer glitch.
“(The system) is new and it is a new process,” Kemerer said. “Even though we thought we were prepared, there were things that came up that we didn’t expect.
We are recognizing that it didn’t work right, and we are going to go from there.”
Neal said he was most upset at the fact that he wasn’t able to get ahold of
Campus Care when he was trying to get his hold released.
“We have been receiving an increased volume of calls and emails that the Campus Care staff is trying to return in a timely manner to release the holds,” Burdette said.
Since Neal wasn’t able to reach Campus Care, he chose instead to visit the Bursar’s Office where he was told his case would be passed to a supervisor who would email Campus Care.
“The payments are still made at the bursar on their MyOHIO account. Students can click on financial, and make a payment, and they can view payment balance,” Burdette said. “But another problem is that the main page of students’ MyOHIO accounts shows that students have zero balance.”
Burdette said she plans to sit down with her team to evaluate the problems and see what they need to do to fix them. She also said Campus Care hopes to communicate better with students.
“We don’t want students not to be able to get in their classes,” Burdette said. “This happened because of holds on students’ accounts, but payments do need to be made on their accounts.”
bc822010@ohiou.edu
