“I was unsure whether I was going to receive aid or if I was not, and I didn’t want to risk having to pay money out of pocket if that was the case,” said Christopher Garcia, a previous student at UC Santa Cruz. “So, out of fear, I decided to just drop out.”
“I have yet to receive my dispersal for financial aid this year, and it has definitely caused a lot of trouble and inconveniences for me and my family, especially for someone like myself who is responsible for paying almost the entirety, if not the entirety, of their tuition and housing expenses,” said Vinny Fortunato, a second-year at UCSC.
“The university has been taking a long time with [dispersing my] loan, and so my family and I have been making those monthly payments. But it’s still telling me that I have a bill that’s $10,000,” said Matthew Morimoto, the Community Unified Student Network lead retention coordinator. “That really scared me for a second — I was like, ‘that can’t be right.’”
These three students are some of many others across our own campus as well as across the country who have been affected by the Free Application of Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) package dispersal delays. Typically, aid is dispersed before the start of the fall quarter in September, however many students have yet to receive their aid. Students’ livelihoods depend on this aid for housing, food security, income opportunities like work-study, tuition, and much more.
With many not being able to pay tuition due to having not received their packages, enrollment holds had been placed on accounts during first pass, preventing them from enrolling in classes.
As a result of the lingering FAFSA delays at UCSC, on Nov. 12, Ch.U.C.K, the lead retention collective coordinators at Engaging Education (e²), released a statement on Instagram to campus leadership about the enrollment holds and financial aid package dispersal delays.
The Ch.U.C.K retention collective has four representatives, each from a different organization that falls under e²: Chicanx and Latine Educandose (ChALE), UMOJA, Community Unified Student Network (CUSN), and Kuya Ate Mentorship Program (KAMP). e², is UCSC’s student-initiated outreach and retention center for student engagement and academic excellence.
The statement they released was also signed by other student leaders, such as Student Union Assembly (SUA) President Airielle Silva and e² Chair Elsie Vizcarra.
The message called for UCSC’s Financial Aid department to support and take action for students who still have not received aid.
“This crisis is affecting all students, and significantly affecting low-income, first-generation students of color,” the message reads. “As a retention collective focused on students of color, we know that these delays will negatively affect our communities’ educational trajectories. Without these packages, students are forced to choose between paying out of pocket — which is not an option for students in our communities who rely on scholarships and grants — or dropping out.”
The need for financial aid for higher education is only increasing. According to a recent report by the Century Foundation, “since January 31, the greatest increase to FAFSA submissions has been in high-poverty communities.”
Khalia Fitzhugh-Crenshaw is the UMOJA lead retention coordinator, and she works to provide African Black and Caribbean (ABC) students with the resources and support they need. She explained more about why Ch.U.C.K. curated their statement to campus leaders and why it’s important for the retention collective to fight for people of color on campus.
“It affects [people of color] the most because we’re the most historically marginalized, and the most historically reliant on financial aid — and [we’re] getting enrollment holds because of it,” Fitzhugh-Crenshaw said. “If you rely on your financial aid package, especially loans and refunds, you’re unable to pay other immediate financial needs … Because of the universities’ mishandling and especially [because] not everybody can make it to the financial aid office in the hours that they have either on Zoom, on the phone, or in person, and we just wanted to advocate for those students.”
At the end of the statement, Ch.U.C.K requested that the administration “follow through on [their] commitment to retaining low-income, first-generation students of color at UCSC,” and lift the holds by Nov. 13. The Financial Aid and Scholarship Office (FASO) responded to a follow-up email from student organizers on Nov. 15, saying they were working on enrollment holds being lifted for students with low balances.
According to director of FASO Lorena Rodriguez, it should not be possible for a student to have an enrollment hold if they are in good academic standing and have an outstanding balance of below $1,000. In an email to City on a Hill Press on Nov. 25, she stated that students with past-due balances of “up to a few thousand dollars” have had their holds lifted.
“If a student’s aid is estimated to cover the past-due balance, we have been working with [Student Business Services] and housing to temporarily lift the hold,” Rodriguez wrote.
Rodruiguez and the associate vice chancellor of enrollment management Michelle Whittingham said that enrollment holds can be placed on a student’s account for other reasons beside overdue balance, such as on-going verification, the student not enrolling in the required number of units, or if the student isn’t meeting academic progress requirements set by the Department of Education.
City on a Hill Press obtained an email dated Nov. 13 addressed to e² and SUA leaders from Richard Hughey, the vice provost and dean of undergraduate education and global engagement. The email included the numbers for all holds and the reasons why they were implemented.
“There are approximately 1,500 holds for past-due accounts of $1,000 or more, 600 Health Center / Immunization holds, and 300 related to academic advising, such as major declaration and academic progress,” the email stated.
In a separate email from Hughey dated Nov. 25 that was also addressed to organizers, he confirmed that holds were temporarily removed for about 500 students, and that holds on past due balances will be “returned to the standard $1,000 after Dec. 2.”
In an interview with City on a Hill Press, Airielle Silva explained that in the face of this crisis, the biggest support systems have come from students themselves. Ch.U.C.K has taken initiative to collect and document students’ experiences with the financial aid dispersal and enrollment holds through a survey accessible to all UCSC students.
“A lot of the initiatives to support students that are struggling are coming from student spaces even though we’re the ones struggling the most,” Silva said. “We are gonna be looking for more student testimonials, and I highly encourage folks to fill out the Ch.U.C.K. Financial aid experience survey because that helps inform the SUA executive officers advocacy surrounding delayed financial aid disbursement.”
Enrollment Holds: Why They’re Happening and Who They Affect Most
Matthew Morimoto, the lead coordinator from CUSN, had an enrollment hold placed on his account due to overdue balance. His family had to call FASO numerous times to get in contact with someone to discuss his aid dispersal issues, he told CHP. Morimoto, along with other students interviewed, mentioned that the FASO only being open from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. makes its resources inaccessible to many.
“I believe [FASO] is understaffed,” Morimoto said. “I know they work hard and are making sure students are getting their financial aid, but it’s not to the quality that it needs to be. Their office hours are way too short and they’re aligned with class time, so a lot of students can’t go to the office.”
When asked if they could use more staff in the office, Michelle Whittingham, the associate vice chancellor of enrollment management, responded immediately with a resounding, “Always.”
According to the UCSC Admissions website, around 77 percent of UCSC students receive some form of financial help from the FASO. This means upward 13,500 students are in need of financial aid assistance in 2024.
As of right now the office has only 28 permanent staff and two emergency hires. Campus provost and executive vice chancellor Lori Kletzer approved the two temporary hires prior to the start of fall quarter in an effort to address the office’s increased workload and high demand.
Elsie Vizcarra, current chair of e² and previous ChALE lead retention coordinator, stated that although understaffing is probably contributing to the enrollment holds, an office being understaffed is not an excuse to put a student’s education at risk.
“What we’re seeing is the university turning their back on students and saying, ‘well, it was your fault, you didn’t fill out the forms,’ ‘it was your fault you didn’t go during the operating hours of financial aid,’ and placing the blame back onto students. When really, it’s students [who] should be looking at administration like, ‘I thought you were supposed to be the ones helping us out,’” said Vizcarra, when asked how e² was helping students through this financial aid issue.
Over an email, Ch.U.C.K. requested a meeting with the UCSC administration to talk about the financial aid dispersal delay and to brainstorm solutions together.
“We also are asking the admin to have a meeting with us in person, an hour long meeting, to discuss and find solutions on ways we can battle this financial aid crisis,” Matthew Morimoto said. “We’re planning on bringing up the [anonymous student] testimonials [to show] it’s not just a couple students, it’s all of these students who have had a tough time and mostly they correlate with one another. It’s not like an individual problem but it’s a group problem as well.”
In Hughey’s response to the student organizers, he said he would “follow up separately on scheduling a time to meet.” It is unclear when the meeting between administration and Ch.U.C.K. will take place, but organizers continue to persist for a set date.
Vizcarra said the letter highlighted a need for administration to reconsider how they treat people of color on their campus.
“We really wanted to highlight the fact that because of the lack of care from administration, students were actively suffering … It was really a question of what kind of students do they want here on campus and who are they actually supporting,” Vizcarra said. “ Because if it was [students of color, and] they really cared about diversity — if they really cared about keeping us here and helping us graduate, this would have been solved. The university would understand that this is a basic thing that students need to succeed.”
ChU.C.K. is currently conducting a survey where students can give testimony about their experiences with financial aid or enrollment holds at this link: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfiyqyoRWl1D7RydtsEy1sIwdMrWZmbQlRa5CQFAxOMmmCWJg/viewform
