Unpaid parking tickets, $150. Health Center fees, $42.37.Overdue book charges $13.56. Unable to receive your transcriptafter graduation, priceless.
Just when graduating college students feel they are home free,fines that appear to come out of the blue slam them.
The SMU tradition where graduates walk out of Dallas Hallrepresents the light at the end of the tunnel for many students.The administration might as well place a slippery banana peel onthe Dallas Hall steps. The smallest fine could bring agraduate’s joy tumbling down.
Believe it or not, this is a problem that plagues graduatingclasses year after year. Despite the astronomical tuition costs,the SMU administration turns into some sort of intelligence agencyin May and December. They probe each senior’s records toensure that all debts are paid.
Sorry to say seniors, but ignoring the fines do not make them goaway. Somebody in the Laura Lee Blanton Building has gone ahead andcombined all the library fees, unpaid parking tickets and the valueof unreturned school materials such as textbooks and athletic gearinto a file. Nobody is exempt from the penalties, regardless of thedebt’s size.
So where do these fines come from? Opportunities for gettingfined can be found all across campus. Students living on campus areconstantly bombarded with aimless paperwork that could sometimescome back to haunt them. Upon moving into designated dorm rooms,form signing becomes a part of the collegiate experience. In manyinstances, these new residents don’t know what they aresigning. Meanwhile, students are then held accountable for all theitems in their home away from home. This includes any damages ormisplacements by the other hall residents.
After years of perseverance and hard work, graduation excitementis quickly stomped out by the unrelenting hounding byadministrators. Graduation time never goes smoothly. Seniors willundoubtedly run into many obstacles down the Hilltop.
The issue with the fines that subsequently push many graduatespast their boiling points has to do with how trivial nature of someof these fines are. Understandably, a fine that extends into thethousands needs to be collected. However, It is ridiculous to makea student’s life miserable for $20.
Ed Board agrees that the school should excuse insignificantlittle debts, instead of wasting time in trying to collect everycent. President Turner, just think of it as a parting gift. Fiveyears from now, $3 may not make a difference for SMU. However, if astudent leaves SMU with a sour taste, potential alumnicontributions may not occur.
