Whether they see a smile or a frown, financial aid work to help students find money to pay for college during their busy first week
Words can be exchanged; papers can fly around the room. The workers of the Office of Student Financial Aid are on the frontlines of university warfare. During the first week of classes, these are the people who take the brunt of student population.
“The first week is notoriously our biggest week,” said Kathy Bobbitt, Associate Director of the Office of Student Financial Aid. “It is very fast paced, and you get some students who are happy and some that are not so happy. We try to help them all the best we can.”
“What really makes this place hectic is the volume of people we deal with,” said Bobbitt.
The time is 9:47 a.m. The inside of Knight Hall remains calm for the time being. There are roughly three people working at the front desks of the registrar’s office, cashier’s office and the financial aid office, and the rest of the oversized room is still desolate.
9:50 a.m. hits, and it is still calm. The students just needed a minute to make their way from class.
Within one minute, there are already kids flooding in from all entrances, and it’s hard to distinguish a smile on any of the faces.
“Not everyone has financial aid, but we work with about three-fourths of the students,” said Tammy Aagard, the University Registrar and Interim Director of Financial Aid.
At a university of almost 10,000 on-campus students, most are receiving financial support in some form or another.
Aagard also added that they deal with roughly one-fourth of that population in the first week at the Office of Student Financial Aid. That is about 2,500 students.
“About 5 or 6 years ago, everything went online. So, to us, it became much easier for students to see exactly what was needed and when,” Bobbitt said.
“Some students do show up unhappy, but sometimes it’s just a matter of getting them to sit down in an office. That way we can find the best way to get the answers they need.”
Whether students are bitter or warm towards the office staff, they all have one goal in mind. Helping students pay for school.
“The hard part is you do see students in some really dire circumstances. Even just that little bit of help, if we can do it, could make the difference between somebody graduating or not,” Aagard said.
Bobbitt said, “If I can’t fix a problem immediately, I will print it off, get an e-mail or phone number to correspond and try to get back to them ASAP.” She continued, “The quicker we can remedy the problem, the better for everybody.”
There was one student who was friendly from the moment he entered the building, a tall man in a white cowboy hat and a pink button up shirt.
This student, while clearly still acquiring the information he needed, did so with a bright smile on his face. He finished the conversation by saying, “Thank you so much ma’am, I hope you have a wonderful day.”
“We do get some frustrated students,” said Aagard. “I think some of it is a lack of understanding with what they need to do, some of it may be that they’ve exhausted all of their aid or they didn’t meet the requirements of a scholarship. It is hard; students are trying to pay for school. But we try to do the best that we can.”
Shortly after 10 a.m., the crowd once again subsides as students make their way back to classes, which by no means is an indicator that the workers in the financial aid office are done with their battles.