Library Fees. Where do they go and what happens to them?

Here at the school it seems that on any given basis, Money is a concern. Whether its financial aid, getting paid, fees, charges and payments, Money invades a portion of our student life. And it always seems that there is some cloak and dagger aspects regarding OUR money and OUR school. And to make matters worse, OURfamu is less than forthcoming in ways to deal with it.

After some digging we here were able to come up with some information about one of the vaguest charges that happen at our school: Library Overdue Book Fines. The first thing you need to know is: The library staff at the law school has ZERO control over them. They are an automated process, and they are automatically posted to your student account. There is a way to reverse them if there is an error, (The head librarian may submit a request) but if you're late you're late, and you must pay. The second thing you as a student needs to be aware of, is that there is no way to pay for this here on campus. It is automatically added to your student fees for the next semester to be deducted without your consent from financial aid. There is no way to pay for it over iRattler either until the time comes for financial aid and tuition settling. And we all know what happens if there is a "fee owed" in the iRattler directory, you can't register, you can't get fin aid. There is no way to pay for it either by running to a cashier's office, because simply....Main Campus will not allow us to have a cashier's point. The library staff can only look up your file and see if you MIGHT have a charge that's already been sent to main campus, thus giving you an idea. But that's all they can do. Once again, because Main Campus will not allow them.

So what is the important lesson here? If you guessed main campus, you are correct. Why does main campus continue to tighten the hold on the staff here? We students complain constantly about how our staff sucks here, but how much do they really suck if they are being restrained by main campus? Why must nearly every visit to any member of our staff at least once a visit say "We'll have to _____ Main Campus." ? (Insert verbiage of choice here) Sure, we can understand that we are Florida A&M University College of Law, and ultimately under the university, just like any other law school; but why must everything revolve around calling/writing/emailing main campus, only to have them get back to us when they deem it necessary and force us to wait for answers over the course of hours, usually days? Fact: The Main Campus exerts far too much authority over a satellite campus that is separated by nearly half the state to effectively manage our affairs.

There is no sane reason why we cannot get the solutions and answers we require without having to go to main campus. There is no sane reason why we do not have a student bursary here where we can make payments. There is no sane reason why staffers who can keep us at arms length and deal with us in a very unprofessional and disinterested manner should ever hold us hostage. There is no reason that we law students should ever be treated as the same level as new college freshmen. As soon to be professionals it is demanded that we walk, talk, and act like professionals. Can we not demand the same of the people who run our school? We should never have to be told as law students to "Come by the _____ building to my office if you have questions" by someone who doesn't know the law school is not located in Tallahassee.

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