Editorial
Customer service lacks at Registrar
April 9, 2009
UW-River Falls has an annual equivalent to tax season. The same stress, frustration and tension of taxes accompanies the all too familiar worrisome late nights of registration time. Each spring, every student who intends on returning to campus the following fall must suffer through the headache of meeting with an advisor, selecting classes out of a shrinking availability pool, fighting with obnoxious overlapping schedules and then cry havoc as courses fill up completely before everyone who needs the class can get in.
And when the inevitable time comes that something goes horribly awry on a student’s DAR or with adding an already filled course, students are sent to the dungeon that is the Registrar’s Office. The Office, quite literally a hole in the wall, is staffed by a group of workers whose apathy for students and their woes is almost palpable in the air. It truly is the UWRF DMV.
One Student Voice editorial board member recently had the misfortune of entering the Registrar’s Office. At first they tried entering the “In” door, which was locked and adorned by a sign instructing students to use the other door. When the ed board member entered the other door, they were met with hostility over using the “incorrect” door. After the workers got over that apparently egregious error, the ed board member was given a wild goose chase as an answer to their question.
Members of the Student Voice staff have also heard complaints from other students over the Registrar’s Office, highlighting the fact that the office workers can be intimidating, not helpful or even neglectful over their job. One such student brought up the fact that she needs to take a “W” for a course she dropped at the beginning of this semester because the Registrar’s Office neglected to process the drop card and refused to take responsibility.
University workers, in any capacity, are employed with the ultimate goal of aiding students. Everything they do is towards that aim. That being said, the employees in the Registrar’s Office need to realize that they exist solely to help students with their questions and problems, not treat them condescendingly or rudely. The Student Voice understands that there are perfectly wonderful people working in that office, but they are overshadowed by the elite few that wear their scowls as a wardrobe piece. The same goes for all offices on campus: Financial Aid, athletics, the various Chancellor, Vice Chancellor and Special Assistant offices, etc… Students on this campus are the customer, and the customer is always right.