The Student Newspaper of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte
Volume XVI, Number 55
Monday, March 30, 1981
Simms
For
Student Body President
Run-Off
Elections
Wednesday
& Thursday
Cone Center
9am-3pm and 6pm-8pm
Dorm Cafeteria
11:30-1:30 and 4:30-7pm
For UPB Chair
Harris has Plans
as New Vice-Chair
By Debbie Miller
Carolina Journal Photo Editor
“I didn’t expect to win, but since I
did. I’m ready to work,” said Mike
Harris, newly elected Vice-Chair of
UPB.
Harris, who soundly defeated in-
cumbant Mary Sue Macke 650-521, is
currently Holshouser Hall Represen
tative to the student legislature, and
has many ideas on promotion and stu
dent involvement in UPB next year.
“I want to act as a sounding board
for the students. I want to be visible,
so the students will come to me with
complaints, compliments, and sug
gestions and know that UPB will hear
them,” Harris added.
Programming doesn’t come new to
Harris who helped work to establish
RHA and served within the organiza
tion for two years.
Harris has specific ideas that he
feels will, better inform the students
on UPB activities. He sees a need for
having centralized locations for UPB
bulletin boards with a calendar of
events for the week or month.
On the issue of UPB/RHA rela
tions, Harris feels the two organiza
tions could and should work closer
together on programming for the
students. “I hope that my relation
ship with RHA and its leaders will
make me a linking pin in future rela
tions between the two groups.
College Student Aid Offices Paralyzed
College Press Service
The Reagan Administration’s
45-day freeze on processing applica
tions for federal financial aid has vir
tually paralyzed most college student
aid offices, but promises to cause
even more problems for students dur
ing the summer, according to various
aid officers.
They predict students, when they
are informed of how much aid they’ll
be getting for the 1981-82 academic
year, will probably be getting much
less than they had anticipated.
Because of the delay caused by the
freeze, however, students may not
hear until the summer, when they
may not have enough time before the
start of fall term to scrape together
money from other sources.
As a result, some administrators
expect there may be an exodus next
fall of students from private colleges
to less expensive public colleges.
The uncertainty prevalent in most
financial aid offices since Reagan pro
posed massive cuts in student aid
programs—including Pell Grants
(formerly Basic Educational Opportu
nity Grants), Guaranteed Student
Loans, and National Direct Student
Loans—was replaced by a more ur
gent, frustrated atmosphere last
week when Secretary of Education
Terrel Bell announced the freeze.
Bell said the government would
process no more Pell Grant applica
tions until Congress acted on his pro
posals to change the eligibility re
quirements for the grants.
But because Pell Grants help deter
mine what other kinds of financial aid
students can get, the freeze has effec
tively stopped the awarding of all
federal aid during this, the busiest
time for assembling aid “packages,”
says Dallas Martin of the National
Association of Student Financial Aid
Administrators.
Colleges are adopting two different
strategies to cope with the emergen
cy. One is to wait until it’s settled.
The other is to, as one administrator
put it, “go through the motions.”
Both, aid administrators say, do little
more than delay the effects of the
freeze until the summer.
“Going through the motions”
allows aid offices to continue to con
struct aid packages for students even
though the packages will probably
fall apart during the summer, says
Joanne Eberle, aid officer at Lehigh
University. Until the summer, all
anyone can do is wait, she says.
“We can’t do much now in the way
of estimating awards or projecting ef
fects on enrollment,” agrees Norman
Beck, director of Ball State’s Univer
sity’s aid office. “But we’ll be pushed
into high gear over the summer, be
tween processing awards and talking
on the phone to students and parents
who are worried they won’t get
enough money to go to school in the
fall.”
Beck says the time between a stu
dent applying for aid and getting the
aid can normally stretch to three or
four months.
A school screens aid applications in
late winter, forwards the survivors to
the federal government for review,
and finally hears of the fate of each
application in March, April and May,
Beck explains. Then his office scram
bles to complete the aid package with
money from other sources. The stu
dent usually hears about the final
package in late May or early June.
But this year, most students won’t
learn their fates until just a few weeks
before the beginning of fall term. For
those students who receive less from
the government than they requested
—and many students will get less if
the president’s budget cuts are ap
proved—those last few weeks will be
nothing less than “havoc” as they try
to find the rest of the money they
need in time, Eberle says.
Nevertheless some schools prefer
“going through the regular motions”
to “sitting in a holding pattern,”
notes University of Virginia associate
aid director James Ramsey. Thus his
school is forging ahead assembling
aid packages just as it did in March of
last year. The difference is that this
year the packages are temporary, he
says.
He expects he’ll “have to go back to
the drawing board” when the govern
ment belatedly announces its aid
awards in the summer.
“Right now we’re sending letters
on the assumption students will
receive the full amount requested
from the government,” Ramsey
notes. “But we’re adding a warning
that these projections are only tem
porary.”
Moreover, Ramsey adds that for the
first time he can remember UVA is of
fering students “two or three hun
dred dollars less than they need.”
He worries that bills for tuition
may arrive before aid packages can be
revamped in the summer, and that
“this is going to cause a lot of hassles
for students who panic that they
can’t pay the bills.”
Other administrators don’t see
much reason to go through the mo
tions. At the University of
Washington, aid officer Catherine
Dyson avers, “We can’t decide how to
deal with it until summer. We can’t
recruit actively because we can’t offer
potential students money.”
Adds the University of Wyoming’s
Delbert Smith, “We’re in a holding
pattern. We can’t even judge next
fall’s enrollment.”
To ease students’ worries, many
schools are devising temporary loan
plans specifically tailored to help
meet the first tuition bill of the fall.
Virginia’s Ramsey notes his school
has a good reputation for “covering
such immediate needs,” and is sure he
can uphold the reputation as long as
students repay the loans within a few
months.
Beck says Ball State has already
begun a plan to provide temporary
financing to students, which means
“there’ll be a problem in cash flow, ob
viously at a cost to the institution.
But we have to do it,” he concludes.
None of the aid officers contacted
for this article by College Press Ser
vice, however, had much hope of mak
ing up all the money lost if the
Reagan cutbacks are approved.
“There simply aren’t enough
university funds to make up the dif
ference,” Eberle says, voicing a com
mon lament. She adds that most
schools’ top priority will be to provide
for currently-enrolled students, usual
ly with temporary loans.
If a two-month loan isn’t sufficient,
“students are going to have to make
fast decisions about staying here or
withdrawing,” she mourns.
While that may sound harsh, Ball
State’s Beck predicts a large number
of students at private schools like
Lehigh are going to have to con
template transferring to less expen
sive public colleges. Considering the
squeeze on students from rising tui
tions and shrinking aid, Washington’s
Dyson calls the migration to state
schools “inevitable.”