Editors Note: This article is a continuation of City on a Hill Press’ coverage published throughout the 2024-25 school year regarding the FAFSA distribution delay. Many of the same sources were interviewed to follow updates as well as conversations with administration surrounding the issue.
Seven months.
That’s how long student leaders have been advocating for better communication and transparency with students and administrators regarding the financial aid disbursement process.
Last week, they achieved a big victory. On May 14, ten administrators attended the first-ever Financial Aid and Scholarship Office (FASO) Town Hall to publicly address student concerns.
Ch.U.C.K, the lead retention collective coordinators at Engaging Education (e²), and the Student Union Assembly (SUA) hosted the event following the financial aid disbursement delays students began experiencing earlier this academic year.
The delays were due to newly implemented FAFSA requirements and holdups in manual processing. As a result, many students were left without aid until week nine of fall quarter or later. This left them with overdue balances that created holds on their winter quarter enrollments.
“In the fall quarter, there was no communication from FASO to the students, and a lot of students had their aid disbursements really delayed,” said Matthew Morimoto, lead retention coordinator for the Community Unified Student Network. “The point of the town hall was to make it clear what went wrong, what’s been happening this school year to try to fix it, and what [FASO is] doing next year to make sure something like this doesn’t ever happen again.”
Ever since the holds were initially placed on accounts in November 2024, e² and the SUA have expressed students’ concerns through countless emails with FASO, meetings with student leaders and administration and hosting FASO administrators at a SUA public meeting.
After these meetings, the students’ terms and demands came into focus. The ones most relevant to the town hall were:
- Agreeing that FASO will proactively reach out to students who have not completed the requirements to receive their aid or who may experience delays
- Adding more FASO hours to accommodate students’ schedules
- More communication, including timely replies and feedback opportunities for students
- Building genuine, non-transactional connections between FASO and students
- Hiring more staff to fill empty positions
At the town hall, Nareh Hamo, internal vice president of the SUA, presented the wins student leaders have accomplished throughout the year regarding financial aid: extended FASO hours, the future development of an updated website with an FAQ page and more communication from the office to students.
Elsie Vizcarra, chair of e² and emcee of the event alongside Hamo, addressed the room and emphasized that, although the wins were good, the fight was far from over.
“I really hope that all of the students in the room don’t let this go,” she said. “It is completely, completely unacceptable that folks were in week nine [of fall quarter] and hadn’t received their aid.”
“I know multiple people who dropped out, I know multiple people who took leave of absences, and so this is me to you all as students: keep fighting and keep going and keep advocating — because it works,” Vizcarra continued. “We got [administration] here in the room today and I think that that’s the first step. Now we just have to hold them accountable.”
Less Words: More Actions
“I’ll be the first one to say that it is not common for [administration] to come out — not common,” said Vizcarra to the room. “Michelle and Lorena have been meeting with us the whole year, and that’s what it takes for us to actually do something on this campus and to change things.”
FASO administrator Lorena Rodriguez stands at a podium while e² chair, Elsie Vizcarra, facilitates the town hall.
The town hall featured an hour-long Q&A with FASO administrator Lorena Rodriguez. It was made up of a mixture of planned questions from student leaders, questions and comments from flashcards turned in to organizers during the event, and spoken statements from audience members.
Earlier in the event, administrators emphasized the concept of an “Ecosystem for Financial and Academic Success.” FASO administrator Michelle Whittingham stated that departments at the university are dependent on each other. This is meant to create an ecosystem where each department supports the next through communication and collaboration.
During the Q&A portion of the event, however, it became clear that this ecosystem is not without flaws. 
A facilitator hands out flashcards and pens to an attendee before the Q&A for them to write and submit questions on.
Rodriguez had previously mentioned that students should not get holds placed on their accounts unless their past-due balance was over $1,000. However, an attendee in the audience shared this was not their experience. Earlier this year, they considered dropping out of UCSC from a $150 overdue balance on their account because of financial aid disbursement delays.
“I had $150 on my account, literally begging [my housing counselor] to remove the hold, and he would not remove it … we’re talking about thousands of dollars that I did not get in aid for months,” they said. “Grocery bills out of pocket, thousands of dollars, and $150 is what I could have lost my education over. And that’s so distressing for a student.”
Rodriguez apologized that the student went through that experience, and responded by saying all financial aid can do is recommend that holds be removed from any department. She clarified the campus policy is a $1,000 past-due limit before there are holds placed on accounts for all departments on campus.
Laura Arroyo, associate vice chancellor of colleges, housing, and educational services, walked onto the stage and responded to the issues that had been raised.
“What I hear clearly is that there is concern about misalignment — that there appears to be a misalignment in the way that we are addressing fees and holding holds,” she said. “I want you to know that I’m hearing you … I’m working on it and I’m gonna take this back to my team and we will make sure to report out where we are so that it is fair and it is equitable.”
Vizcarra took this opportunity to direct a statement to the administrators in the room, telling them more transparency is still needed.
“Things need to be straight here on campus, people need to know … that they’re going to get their financial aid on time. People need to know that if there is something happening with financial aid, that on the back end, housing and enrollment are doing their due diligence,” she said. “Not communicating with each other is unacceptable because the reality is that people like us – the people in this room – have had to suffer a lot of consequences because you all have decided that communication is hard.”
Updates: Staffing and Communication
The event also provided an opportunity for students and administration present to receive updates from Whittingham and Rodriguez, who led an informational presentation.
Rodriguez provided updates for staffing, stating that recruitment was underway for the positions of financial aid advisor, assistant director of customer service and outreach, business systems analyst, and six peer advisors — nine in total.
“Because of budget cuts, we are reorganizing the department to make sure that we have more processing capacity than what we have,” Rodriguez said.
Whittingham clarified to City on a Hill Press that they needed to fill these positions because there are staff departures, and that due to the current hiring freeze as a result of the budget deficit, they obtained special permission to do so.
Another change that has been implemented is an extension of both kinds of office hours by an hour each, with FASO “currently exploring options for appointments.” Zoom and phone drop-in advising hours are now from 9:00 a.m. to noon, front desk drop-in advising is now from 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m..
An update to the FAFSA processing system was also announced during the event. While FAFSA files used to be processed manually, this year’s updated system allowed the office to process them in batches.
The FASO’s goal is to have aid offers sent to students by Sept. 1 for files completed by August 15 and that aid offers will start going out in early July. Some types of financial circumstances, like appeals or dependency overrides, will be open on June 1, with the review process beginning a week later.
Despite the progress demonstrated by the presentation, some attendees still had concerns.
Rigo Ventura, a third-year attendee and current SUA vice president of student life, said that while it was nice when administration shows up to events like these, he was leaving with a lot more questions than answers.
“I appreciate the commitments, but I would believe it when I see it,” Ventura said. “What was probably the biggest issue of tonight was: Why does college housing and educational services not work closely together with financial aid?”
“Why are students getting evicted because they have not gotten their financial aid?” he continued. “These are all issues that could be addressed if departments just actually talked to each other and worked together, which currently they’re not doing a great job at.”
