The Armchair Politician

You have to admire KSU. They evidently try quit hard to be inept at every undertaking. Kennesaw State has been striving hard over the past few years to streamline their computing resources and other technology applications. Or, so they would have us believe. I’ll be damned if I’ve seen anything made easier.

Looking at my class schedule the other day, it turns out that one of them has a lab associated with it. This wouldn’t necessarily be a problem, but the time of the lab conflicts with another class I have. Of course, it would have been too hard for them to let me know about the lab when I was signing up. Of course not, that would be too helpful in trying to arrange your schedule; it’s much more fun having to go back during Late Registration and get a reasonable schedule. Of course, it also would have been too difficult to notify me somehow that I had classes with a time conflict. Instead, had to make this realization by sheer luck. Brilliant!

Noting this, I go to register for classes this morning (when registration opened). Behold! There’s an administrative hold on my account, so I’m prevented from registering. Of course, they couldn’t have told me this a few days ago. That would have let me discover the cause, hopefully correct it, and register today without incident. But that would make things too simple. No, they can only tell you there’s a hold on your account when your registration period starts. Because the most helpful thing in getting a reasonable schedule involves not only having to make last-minute changes, but also being prevented from doing so until after registration is closed! Brilliant.

I call them to find out why there’s a hold on my account, fearing that my HOPE Scholarship funds didn’t go through, or there was some kind of administrative confusion. No, it turns out they owe me money. That’s right, they prevented me from signing up for classes because they owe me money. Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant.

As part of their efforts to make campus life easier for students, Kennesaw forced a KSU-themed debit card down our throats. It’s supposed to, and I quote from their brochure, “give [students] choice in how to receive financial aid”. It evidently gives us this choice by forcing us to use it. Carrying on, the problem is that I never received said debit card. As a result the card had never been activated, and Kennesaw was unable to transfer my $150.00 HOPE-provided book refund onto the card. Thus, the hold. Now here’s the utterly goofy part. They sent me the check anyways. So I have a hold on my account because they couldn’t send me money, except, you know, they had already sent me the money. But it would have been too much trouble to remove the hold. Brilliant.