Pace University is known by the public to be a dream school located in the heart of New York City. However, as previously discussed in my Scholarly Strike article, the Pace student body is going through a revolution. If you’re a Pace student, you know that Pace is shady. However, they are being irresponsible with handling student financial services.
For those of you who are not Pace students, let me catch you up to speed. College financial aid offices are probably the worst place on earth. When you enroll in a university, you’re excited about this new chapter of your life and being able to be somewhat independent. The first roadblock everyone faces is the financial aid office. For some reason, every time you call the financial aid office, it feels like an unwanted game of twenty questions. Every semester it seems the people working in financial aid, simply do not care about their responsibility, helping students pay their tuition on time and know exactly what awards they get. Even before the pandemic, you would wait hours to get to talk to someone only to be put on hold, and most of the time be hung upon. The twin of the financial aid office is known as Pace’s Office of Student Assistance, aka OSA. OSA is just as corrupt as financial aid. They assume you are the worst person on earth and have never contacted them nor turned in any required documents. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the offices would actually relay important information back and forth. But thanks to COVID-19 and Pace’s untimely and shady transfer of OSA’s duties, students are being unenrolled and left with no one responding.
The reality of Pace’s student body is to fend for yourself when dealing with financial aid and OSA. It is even better when Pace decides to move OSA to an entirely new section of the University and halts or stops crucial documents from being processed. Pace has decided that due to their unwanted renovation, students are going to be unregistered from their classes. These students have been trying to work with financial aid and OSA for months. Also, the process in which they decide who gets unenrolled or on probation is basically a randomized list. No, I am not kidding. Over 400 students have been the victim of Pace’s horrendous systems. Yes, Pace has unenrolled hundreds of students in the middle of a pandemic due to their lack of being able to process papers. If you even try to call any office, you will either not get through, ignored, or placed in a 300 caller line.
Now you may be thinking, well, it is not Pace’s fault everyone waited so long to say something. You are wrong if you think that, and I know because I am being affected personally. I was supposed to go debt-free this semester. Last week, Pace decided to revoke a scholarship a month into classes and made my payment 7x what my final amount was supposed to be. Truthfully I do not even get why Pace needs this money, as stated in my notice that they expected me to do this. I am being punished for not returning to the former epicenter of the pandemic in the United States. I was supposed to blindly trust the University, which now has 20 cases on the Pleasantville campus, due to football players who could not contain themselves from random hookups for a semester. So thank you, Pace for once again failing your students, I mean it is not like you charge 70k a year just to have below-average facilities for your student body.
If you are wondering why I am writing this in a sarcastic tone, it is because most of Pace University’s administration and offices are a joke, why should we take them seriously? Everyone is upset and looking for answers. But President Marvin Krisolv is too busy writing articles for other publications to make himself feel better about his lack-luster job.
Pace’s student body deserves better. The student body is what drew me to enroll in Pace and why I am still here. However, how the University handles student crisis is very sad, to say the least. So what will Pace say in its next press release? Who knows, but those students who have been wrongfully unenrolled deserve better than a safe PR apology. We deserve better we deserve a university that actually cares about their student’s well-being, but when will that happen?
For those affected by Pace University some helpful emails:
Mark Stephends, head of the PLV and NYC financial aid offices, mstephens@pace.edu
Student Government Association, sganyc@pace.edu