m mm Serving the students and the University community since 1893 Thursday, June 16, 1988 Chapel Hill, North Carolina NewsSportsArts 962-0245 BusinessClassifieds 962-1163 - i 5 1 .niiK ;((8' Rugged out i . Jonny Gautier, 19, and Bryon Pippin, 17, are not carpeting the front lawn of Peabody Hall, but Meeting By SUSAN HOLDSCLAW Staff Writer Some UNC students may be sur prised to learn that on-campus fall semester room rents are due today, because many students say they did not receive the bills until a week before the deadline. Students say they received their bills June 8 or 9, almost a week after a representative of the University cashier's office said they were mailed. The Department of University Housing sent room assignment no tices to students at the end of May, but the words, This is not a bill," were printed at the bottom of the letter. On June 3, the University cashier's office mailed the official bill for the fall room rent, said Collin Rustin, associate director of Univer sity housing. Rustin said giving students one-and-a-half to two weeks to pay the rent was standard procedure. The room assignment notice said failure to pay the amount indicated by June 16 would result in a can cellation of the student's housing contract. Students who paid a $75 deposit in February before the lottery lose $25 of that as a forfeiture charge if the department cancels their con tract, Rustin said. Students who used deferment cards to pay the deposit will be charged $25 for the cancel lation, he said. Catherine Womble, teller-clerk supervisor in the University cashier's office, confirmed that the bills were mailed June 3. Anna Campbell, a rising junior from Sherrills Ford, said she received her bill June 8. Although she had no i 5i f ! ...... v wwv room rent "We try to get the bills out as soon as possible, and hopefully, students will have two weeks to pay them, (but) when you're dealing with 7,000 students, there are some that get lost in the processing. " Wayne Kuncl, UNC housing director problems making the payment, one week may not be enough time for other students, she said. Many students may be on vacation or must have their mail forwarded to them because they are not living at home this summer, so paying the rent on time may be a real problem for them, she said. Actually, Rustin said, students may have some leeway on the June 16 deadline. He does not receive a list of delinquent accounts from the cashier's office until June 22, so students have an extra two to four days to pay the bill before the cashier compiles the list, he said. After receiving the list of students who have not paid their rent, Rustin said the housing department waits to cancel their housing contracts. Hous ing department officials first send letters to students notifying them that their.rent is past due, he said. The housing department will allow "at least one week and more often two" weeks for a reply before it cancels a student's contract and assigns another student to that room, Rustin said. He added that he would deal with C3r 1 - 1 w Tar Heel Tony Deifell " jiIX rather are sizing the carpet for a room in the basement of Peabody. deadline individual situations when students miss the deadline. Only a small number of excep tional situations exist, he said. "One situation makes you feel like the process isn't working when in fact, it works very well." Housing director Wayne Kuncl emphasized that the housing depart ment mailed only the room assign ments. The billing process is the responsibility of the University cash ier, he said. When asked why the bills could not be enclosed with students' room assignment notices, Kuncl replied that the housing department "works closely with the cashier's office and looks for ways to improve the process." Consolidating the billing and room assignment procedures is not as easy as it might seem, said Rustin. "Com bining the two is logistically impos sible," he said. Because the cashier is the Univer sity's billing agent, it is necessary to separate billing and room assign ments to keep the process accurate with University fiscal management, he said. Hearing for police officers By MARK EVANS Staff Writer A hearing scheduled for June 8 to resolve the grievances of 14 Univer sity police officers has been post poned until July 7, despite the complaints of the officers' lawyer. The officers claimed the University police department did not give them the opportunity to apply for 12 promotions when it reorganized in June 1987. Several officers accused Chief Charles Mauer and Robert Sherman, director of the public safety department, of favoritism and racism in hiring practices. The officers asked the University to reverse the reassignments. A three member committee would have heard the officers' complaints before mak ing a recommendation to the chancellor. The officers' lawyer, G. Nicholas Herman, charged last week that UNC had not told him of the delay in the hearing. But University Personnel problem "We try to get the bills out as soon as possible, and hopefully, students will have two weeks to pay them," Kuncl said. As for students who are left with only a week to pay the rent, he said, "When you're dealing with 7,000 students, there are some that get lost in the processing." Scott Residence College Governor Brian Sipe, a rising senior from Hickory, said he also received his bill on June 8. He normally receives mail from Chapel Hill in one day, he said. Because he is one of the 67 men from Teague Residence Hall who was reassigned to a different hall for the upcoming academic year, he said his room rent is not due until July 1. Although he also received a letter informing him of the reassignment at the end of May, the housing depart ment is giving all former Teague residents some extra time to decide if they want to accept the new room assignments, he said. Sipe said he thought the housing department should have sent the bills out in May, but he understood what housing officials were trying to accomplish by mailing the bills later, leaving some students only one week delayed Director Jack Gunnells said Herman was told of the delay on June 3. UNC had received paperwork from Her man only five days before the hearing, leaving the University short on preparation time, he said. At a June 8 press conference, Herman said he had heard nothing until June 7 about the hearing being postponed. William Campbell, chairman of the Staff Grievance Committee, released a statement later that day noting that he had been out of the state because of a death in the family and he had not had an opportunity to prepare for the hearing. He added that if he had been in town, he would have postponed the hearing on his own initiative. Because he had not been able to review the case, he said he needed to study the issues and the notebook of materials provided by Herman. See POLICE page 2 for some to pay. "(The housing department) is concerned with students using the system to pay two against one," he said. Many students who are success ful in the lottery are also looking for apartments to see which option is the better deal, he said, so the housing department is trying to force these students to decide where they are going to live. The sooner the depart ment knows who is going to cancel University housing contracts, the sooner it can begin to place students on the waiting list in those rooms, he said. The system helps to process the waiting list faster and to filter out See BILLS page 3 In This Issue Freshman housing news page 3 Cat's Cradle to move page 4 Town council page 4 Business page 6 "Bull Durham" review page 8 Joe Bob pages 9, 10 Movies page 12 Music page 13 Crosswords, comics pages 15, 18, 19

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