By: Angeline Dominguez
Staff
With the beginning of fall semester 2014, John Jay students experienced some difficulties with the switch from eSIMS to CUNY first. Late last March, students received an email from Robert Pignatello, Senior Vice President for Finance and Administration, stating the retirement of the eSIMS database and introduction to a new one, known as CUNY first. On Thursday, Aug. 28, 2014, the CUNYfirst website crashed, not allowing students to view their schedules or register for courses. “I had a lot of students who were upset, students who were registering late who al- ready had complicated situations to begin with,” said Professor John Staines. “It’s frustrating that I had students that were trying to get into classes kind of last minute and couldn’t, that was frustrating.” At exactly 3:02pm that day, Robert Troy, the school’s vice president of enrollment management sent out a memorandum to the John Jay campus community acknowledging the glitches going on with the CUNY first database. The following was stated: 1.Students will not be charged any change of registration fee during the drop/ add period (until Sept. 3.) 2.The university has extended the 100% tuition refund date until the close of business on Wednesday, Sept. 3. 3.Students can view their course schedules through JSTOP on the John Jay College homepage. Staines said, “Financial Aid has been relying on a database with numerous errors and, for reasons that I do not understand, we have had a difficult time getting the errors fixed.” During the summer, students claimed to have had outstanding balances on theiraccounts when viewed on CUNY first. “I called financial aid and they told me it was a glitch, that whatever is pending on my balance means that my account was already paid off, which was quite confusing to understand. I never had to go through this,” said Yesenia Matos a junior transferstudent at John Jay. Haddassah Yisrael, treasurer of the debate club at John Jay, claims that because of the switch over to CUNYfirst, student enrollment has dropped at the school. “This decline in enrollment created less money; all student organizations had to create budgets lower than their initial requested monies. Sitting in student council meetings was heart wrenching as I watched my peers struggle to remove events, materials, keynote speakers, as well as additional funds that were pertinent to the success of their team be abolished,” said Yisrael via email. On the contrary, Staines, who also stands as a new Major Advisor at the college said “I haven’t seen anything in anystudents records that were incorrect, that were a result of CunyFirst [but] that doesn’t mean there have not been.” Students have also been experiencing issues with having their credits being transferred from their previous schools on to their John Jay transcripts. “Frankly degree audit, the old database, is much bigger of a problem and that has been my source of problems, not CUNY first,” said Staines. CUNY first and Degree audit are two separate databases. It is not responsible for the mishaps students have had with financial aid and credit transfers. “I am infuriated that when I transferred, my AP credits and my mandatory english class credits did not come over,” said Matos. On the CUNY first website students are allowed to register for classes, view their account balances and transcripts. Susuky Zambramo, a junior at the college, said, “It wasn’t too hard…not like everyone says. I’d rate it a six out of ten.” Despite the glitches that have been denying some access into these documents, Staines describes the school administration to be doing their best to respond to these problems as quickly as possible. “I feel like it gave people more access to their own personal stuff, it was easier. I don’t know what the frustration would be. Maybe it’s because they (students) don’t know how to use it or maybe it was because they were too lazy to even try to use it,” said Kevin Ramos, a junior at John Jay. “It’s [a] change, you have to adapt to, I don’t know why would someone would even complain about it.”
