We Are Still Working On Your Enquiry

From: Zeina Khochaiche

To: Student Admin Services & Co

Subject: My desperate plea for your attention (and help)

Contents of email:

Hello Student Admin Services, 

I hope this email receives you well. How are you?

It has been a while. Weeks actually. Have you received my email? Is there anyone I can speak to? It seems like your services are either poorly allocated or horrifically managed. Or both. 

Student admin services are difficult to navigate — I can only assume it’s the same on your end. Given that the primary mode of communication is email exchange or ticket submission, I find it difficult to understand the status of any query I submit. The online updates often provide vague updates where your ticket has been “forwarded” or that it is “In progress” but never anything further. 

How can I explain to you the nature of my situation in more than a few dot points with my student number tacked on at the end? When I do get to speak to you, it’s only on the phone. Most times the student call centre requires a wait or ends up diverting me to another email or “specialist” service I can contact, passing on my ticket to the next over-worked team.

I wait weeks for replies only to receive notices that you are “still working on [my] enquiry”. Is your congestion from under resourcing? Ineffective structuring? Why can’t we come see you or organise an appointment to get real advice, and answers to all the questions we’re asking? 

Throughout my university experience, I have accessed most student admin services. I have changed degrees twice. I have requested credit approval. I have seen an academic advisor. I have navigated the Dalyell requirements. I have applied for and planned a short-term exchange program. I have requested simple extensions. I have used the student call centre more times than I can count. And I have sought out student health resources. Each experience has been burdened by the convoluted and elongated processing times of every resource. The only true and consistent email I receive from student services, ironically, is the program generated mental health service from “Innowell” who asks me about my “wellbeing” more often than I remember to book a psychologist appointment. Innowell can’t help me. 

More often than not, admin teams only contact to outline their delay in responding or end up passing on my query to another team. For requests as simple as accessing my official student transcript to apply for internships, youth allowance specifications or exchange programs, the process can take weeks. Months even.

Since I realised email and ticket opening would not reach the pace required for deadlines, I thought I’d come see you in person instead. I tried to find and book a consultation with a member from the Student Mobility and Dalyell team only to be denied entry at the ground floor. You no longer take walk-ins or phone calls. The Student Centre prefers calls rather than in-person calls due to the volume of requests coming in. Something needs to give. We need more hands responding to online enquiries and we need more faces to access when email is not enough. We need to provide these service workers with enough resources so they don’t drown, and pay them enough so that admin workers can become specialists, ready to help students with any enquiry.

University management are currently considering removing the 5-day simple extension in favour of a 3-day model which would have drastic effects on student academic participation. Not to mention it would completely overwhelm and congest student academic services on your end. With all the work students put in to get 5-day extensions, why revert back to a broken system? The simple 5-day extension has served as a crux for maintaining personal, mental, academic, and professional balance. Its reduction would not aid the student community.

Did you consult with students or take a survey before you began planning this change?  If there was an academic or outstanding administrative issue with this extension model, where is the transparency? Or compromise? Most students rely on this grace period during a semester full of co-curriculars, health issues, caring responsibilities or just plain stress, and this will heavily impact student mental health.  The threat that this change poses to our academic experience is a reflection of the admin services’ lack of attunement to student conditions. 

At the root of this is a lack of resource accessibility and student consultation. We don’t understand how your system works entirely but we do know that it needs to evolve. What do you need? The student admin services are supposed to aid any student administrative issues and tasks. So why are models not built to compliment both the student lifestyle and the successful functions of a help team? 

The task ahead seems sisyphean. Where do we draw the line between balancing sympathy we have for the congestion you experience and the academic, personal, and professional issues it causes for us? 

Talk with us. Listen to our student representatives. Let’s transform this email off our keyboards and tab-ridden screens to find better models that serve both you and us. We can guarantee that our communities move fast and we wouldn’t need weeks to respond with our views. 

I look forward to hearing from you as soon as possible. And don’t forget to look after yourself. 

Kind Regards, 

Zeina Khochaiche