Serving the GW Community since 1904

The GW Hatchet

AN INDEPENDENT STUDENT NEWSPAPER SERVING THE GW COMMUNITY SINCE 1904

The GW Hatchet

Serving the GW Community since 1904

The GW Hatchet

NEWSLETTER
Sign up for our twice-weekly newsletter!

Officials name senior vice president, chief of staff
By Fiona Riley, Assistant News Editor • March 26, 2024

Saige Saunig: Let go of my hold!

Since the current semester is coming to a close, the time has come for students to pick which classes they plan on taking for the spring of 2011. For many, this can be a very stressful time, filled with worries about fulfilling all GCRs and other major requirements. The last thing that students need is even more stress surrounding the scheduling process.

Unfortunately, some students have faced a number of obstacles in the weeks prior to registration.

Various holds on accounts, namely those in place due to incomplete or missing immunization forms, have sent a number of students into a panic over the past few weeks. At the beginning of the academic year, every student is required to submit an immunization form before he or she is allowed to attend classes. GW makes it relatively easy to submit these forms, and most students felt as though they received an adequate amount of time to have them completed.

Some students submitted their immunization forms at the proper time and were informed by Student Health Service – which places holds on students’ accounts if their forms are missing or incomplete – that it had received the forms and filed them accordingly. However, now these students are being informed that their records are either incomplete or missing altogether.

I have personally had a negative experience regarding SHS’s handling of my immunization forms that almost prevented me from registering at the proper time. After my forms were submitted in August, and I received a notification that they were put on file, I naively assumed that my interactions with SHS were over. However, after the University announced class registration dates and placed holds on accounts, I received a notification that I had a hold on my account due to an incomplete immunization form. Over the next two weeks, I made several attempts to call the SHS office and figure out why this hold existed, but I was never able to get through. Finally, last week, I was able to speak to someone from SHS, who reviewed my records, saw that all of my requirements were met and then removed the hold on my account. But had I waited any longer to contact SHS and dispute the unnecessary hold on my account, I would have run the risk of not being able to register for my classes on time.

My experience with SHS is not an isolated incident by any means. Numerous students on campus have expressed grief about the inefficiency of record-keeping at the health center. Records can be misplaced or lost completely, which can put students at the disadvantage of having to retrieve new forms in a very limited period of time. Other students have complained about the terrible communication between SHS and GW students, as students are often told their forms are complete in the fall, only to be informed of incomplete sections a few weeks before registration. Students are then forced to run around to ensure they remove the hold in time for registration, which, given students’ busy schedules, can be a major hassle.

In order to make the time preceding class registration less stressful, SHS simply needs to work on its efficiency. Once students’ records are received, there is no reason that the records should be lost or misplaced, especially since filing is typically a computerized process. Additionally, if students have outstanding holds on their accounts, they need to be informed of them in a timely fashion, not a few weeks before registration. This is an area in which GW’s interactions with its students could be easily improved, and the University should fix this problem before students have to register for classes next semester.

The writer is a freshman majoring in journalism.

Readers can visit the Forum to comment on this column.

More to Discover
Donate to The GW Hatchet