Paying rent and eating every day have been deemed unnecessary to getting an education.
That is according to Jennifer Pollard, interim director of financial aid.
Pollard started a firestorm Wednesday when she responded to students who "can't pay their rent, they can't eat, get their car or are getting collection calls…" by telling them that financial aid is there "to supplement paying for their education…not responsible for paying their education."
There must be some sort of mistake. According to the FAFSA website, financial need for school includes the cost of room and board, even when the students are not contracting the school for these services. It is even specified that the aid can be used to pay for dependant care. Just because it doesn't appear on our bill that does not mean that it doesn't apply.
Obviously there is a rift between Pollard's views and what the U.S. Department of Education says.
Her stance is more than slightly disturbing. Students most often move off campus to save money, as the rent is drastically lower than on-campus housing, and implying that students are using the financial aid to support a "lifestyle" that wastes their money is wrong in most situations.
Regardless of Pollard's callousness to student's issues, the main issue is UB's horrible handling of informing students about the changes.
One would think that a change on this scale would call for a big information campaign to make sure students are aware of the new policies and to prepare for them. Instead, they updated their facebook page and sent out an email. It's a definite blunder to break up over email, and it's even worse to inform someone of major financial changes that will affect how they live over email as well. Even a text message would have been better.
Whether or not the university thinks it did enough to warn us, UB undeniably did a poor job, as evidenced by the record number of calls into the SRC leading up to the beginning of classes. They've even set a new record for calls in a single day at over 10,000. This is a failure on an epic scale.
When you take into consideration the fact that our tuition was hiked and that UB is making at least $10 million more per year, the least that could have been done is some flyers around campus, maybe they could have put a message on a blimp, anything to show that they were actually concerned bout us.
Yet it's become more and more obvious that this is not the case. When UB makes a massive change that is going to have rippling effects on every student on campus, apparently those being affected are completely absent from their thoughts. Their number one concern is making things easier for themselves without any regard to the consequences it may have on the very people that hold this school up on their shoulders.
