I’ve often told people what has kept me at Belmont is the people I deal with on a daily basis – my professors, fellow students and friends.
But what about the people and things I don’t deal with on a daily basis? Like, I don’t know, maybe, the well-being of the Belmont community as a whole.
Let’s begin with class registration as our first example, shall we? It’s fresh on everyone’s mind.
Class registration for the second semester of my senior year was something I thought I should celebrate. After all, it would be the last time I would have to get up early to log into BannerWeb and type five-digit codes ridiculously fast.
Except, 30 minutes passed and I still could not log into BannerWeb through MyBelmont or registration.belmont.edu.
I would liken the experience to signing up for ObamaCare.
I’m guessing our servers could not handle the capacity of what is now Belmont’s smallest and dullest class (as this year’s freshmen are the biggest and brightest), let alone any of the other classes.
That led me to think that if our technological infrastructure were as strong as the new buildings around campus, Belmont would be in pretty good shape.
But BannerWeb is merely the tip of the iceberg. I really want to get under your skin, so let’s explore financial services.
Every summer, students, like myself, call their office angry, only to be put on hold for extended periods of time. We don’t even know who to be mad at. We just know we’re really irate because our families are trying to budget for tuition while we get to listen to muzak since nobody can get to our calls.
And when we aren’t given our estimated aid package in time to sign up for a 12-month plan versus an eight-month plan, we’re given yet another strain we didn’t anticipate.
If you’ve read the Vision’s recent story on campus accessibility, you know that Melissa Smith, director of student support and disability services at Belmont, is in charge of 225 students with disabilities – both mental and physical. That is simply a ridiculous amount of responsibility to put on ONE person for a department where individual needs have to be the priority.
The more I thought about it, I realized that as much as our student body has grown, support staff in offices like financial aid, disability services and counseling also experience the strain of not having enough people to cater to Belmont’s growing population in a timely manner.
To be honest, I’m not really sure why these people have chosen to stay in these departments. With the incredible workloads and looming sense of impending doom in the form of angry students and parents, theirs are difficult jobs.
The next time you’re on the phone with a representative from one of these departments, try to see the situation from his or her side of the fence.
We’re all in these growing pains together.
Vision Sports Editor Katie Greene is a senior mass communication major.
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