Loan Officer Blames Bill Delay On New, Efficient Processing

The director of the student loan office said yesterday that preparations to make term bills more accurate resulted in a one-week mailing delay of the October 20 bill.

H. Jerrold Gibson said his loan office waited until after registration was over to begin processing any term bills in an attempt to include the latest information on room and board contracts.

Almost Three Weeks

It took almost three weeks to compile this data and produce the bills, Gibson said.

He blamed the delay on the amount of time needed to code the information for input into a computer.

However, the billing system is running much more smoothly this year than last with complaints down 75 per cent from last year, Gibson added.

He said that complaints have come from students who expected to receive loan money when the term bills came out.

His office tried to insure that students who needed money would receive cash advances to tide them over until the term bills were mailed, Gibson said.

No Hungry Students

"No one was going hungry because of the term bill delay," he said.

He said he expects no further delays in mailing out monthly term bills because the same information compiled for the first term bill will be used for the rest of the year.

Hallie Harris, staff assistant to the director of financial aid, said yesterday she thought the billing system was working very well, but added that many students have complained that their loans have not been credited to their term bills.

Misunderstanding

She said a misunderstanding between students and the financial aid office has caused the delay in crediting the loans.

The aid office informed students in the pre-registration packet that they would have to come to the office and sign a loan voucher before processing of the loans would begin.

Some students assumed the loans would be credited automatically to their term bills and failed to sign the vouchers, Harris said.