STAFF EDIT: Office of bad ideas

A seemingly run-of-the-mill email arrived in the inboxes of all Boston University students Monday evening, the body of which blithely asking students to please click a link and take a simple survey. Once at the survey, the student would see a couple lines of text, followed by some general questions of preference regarding administrative offices on campus. If they cared to read the text, or even click the link at all, they would have seen a brief sentence explaining that BU is considering combining the Office of Financial Assistance, the Registrar, the Office of Student Employment, the University Service Center and the Office of Admissions into one hybrid office. This measure is still in planning phase, hence the survey, but imagining its realization conjures an image so chaotic it’s practically laughable.

As one of the largest universities in the nation and servicing tens of thousands of students, BU could never function on a daily basis without a well-oiled administrative machine. A carefully planned web of offices coupled with an efficient albeit sometimes frustrating bureaucracy makes it so that everything has a place and everyone knows where to find it. But this move, which is likely yet another endeavor to cut costs in budget-crippling economy, would doubtlessly do far more harm than good. Considering the recent announcement that University of California schools are raising their tuitions by over 30 percent next fall, students are forced to wonder how their own schools will be compensating for budget upsets. All students should prepare for sacrifice, but none should have to tolerate the compromising of services essential to their success as students.

With all of these offices ‘- which are arguably among the most important offices on campus ‘- combined into one, students will likely face longer wait times, more unreturned calls and emails and more clerical errors. What further sours the plan is the obvious fact that these offices have little to do with one another ‘- the Office of Admissions is for students who haven’t even been at BU yet, while the Office of Financial Assistance is for only a portion of BU students who receive financial aid, while the Registrar is an entirely separate beast that bears the near-impossible task of making sure each and every student is enrolled in the correct classes at the correct time.

Throwing all of these responsibilities into one melting pot-office ‘- while probably cutting dozens of jobs in the process ‘- might save BU some green, but it will whip student approval ratings well into the red. This is just another example of a university administration desperately trying to cut corners to close budget gaps, and doing so without any consideration of the expense to students. With any luck, the survey results will prove this, and this idea will be scrapped just as quickly as it seems to have been generated.