This semester marked the College’s first use of the electronic billing system, or e-bill, to bill students for tuition, room and board and meal plans. According to the Bursar’s Office, the transition to e-bill seems to have gone smoothly.

p. E-bill allows students to view their bill online, rather than receiving a paper copy.

p. “I’m really pleased with it,” College Bursar Barbara Heberling said.

p. Heberling said, for the most part, the switch seems well received.

p. “As with anything, you’ll get some complaints; but we really haven’t had too much of a negative reaction. I’ve been really pleased. I think it has worked well,” she said.

p. Herberling said the new system has several advantages over the old.

p. Students are now able to view their bill immediately and see the same information as staff members, allowing for better communication between students and the Bursar’s Office.

p. Herberling said that problems with lost bills are virtually gone.
Herberling added that students seem comfortable with the new process.

p. “Most students do things electronically nowadays,” she said. “Moving forward this way, it was a natural progress, to a degree.”
In addition to the traditional payment methods, several electronic payment options, independent of the e-bill system, have been recently adopted, including the option to pay tuition with a credit card.

p. “In the past we haven’t taken credit cards,” Heberling said. “But Tuition Management Systems [the company used to handle tuition payments] said it was possible. It’s up to the student or the parent as to how they want to pay.”

p. With this option, a convenience fee is applied—a tiered amount that is based on how much the student or parent chooses to pay via credit card.

p. Three percent of whatever portion of tuition is being paid at that time is charged on top of the tuition itself.

p. But this, and other payment options, is not tied to the electronic billing system.

p. “The e-bill is just a delivery system,” Heberling said. “All the same payment options are still there.”

Campaigns for freshman elections began last Tuesday, with 34 candidates running for nine elected positions. This year’s crop of candidates are employing a variety of methods to get their message out to the freshman electorate.

p. Facebook has taken a prominent role in the campaign, with all but one of the candidates in the races for president, vice president of social affairs and vice president of advocacy using the social networking site’s “group” function as a means of advancing their campaigns and platforms.

p. Some candidates are running on make-shift tickets. Their Facebook groups include the platforms of other candidates.
“Facebook really gives everyone a chance to get the word out, because we haven’t really had a lot of time to meet everyone,” presidential candidate Stephanie Apple ’11 said.

p. Many Facebook groups include the candidates’ platforms, campaign schedules and qualifications for positions in the Student Assembly.

p. Another popular method of campaigning comes in the classic form of posters tacked on bulletin boards or dorm doors.

p. Bright colors, rhyming slogans and humorous photos are intended to increase name recognition in a race where many voters are unfamiliar with the candidates.

p. In the stairwells of Yates Hall, posters are nearly overlapping in an effort to shore up support for candidates.

p. Elections will be held this Thursday.

__Flat Hat reporter follows College tour, finds seven statements are untrue__

p. For most high schoolers, a student-led campus tour is their quintessential first impression of the College. Last week, The Flat Hat audited a tour to see if prospective students are given nothing but the truth. Not surprisingly, the College is painted in a positive light.

p. Discussion of the Wren cross controversy, budget deficits and falling national rankings were omitted in favor of tour guides’ personal stories about the “awesome” campus life here at the College. The table below shows some of the facts presented and explains why they are true or false.

p. Not every statement on the tour was recorded, only facts that required outside research. Facts such as “the College has about 5,500 undergraduates” were stated while on the tour, but because they are common knowledge, they did not merit inclusion in this chart.

__Emergency alert system test reaches 98 percent of registered users__

A test of the emergency alert system failed again yesterday when the campus alarm remained silent.

p. “You didn’t hear an alarm because the alarm didn’t work,” Vice President for Student Affairs Sam Sadler said. As of press time, a team of engineers from the alert company was exploring why the alarm had failed.

p. Other than the lack of an audible alarm, the test mostly succeeded. The regular College homepage was replaced with a message on the computer screen explaining that a test of the system was being conducted and that e-mails were sent out to all students, faculty and staff. According to Sadler, more people were successfully contacted this time. During this test, about 1.9 percent of registered numbers were not reached, including some students’ cell phones and at least one classroom phone in Morton.

p. When functioning, the alarms ring at 120 decibels, approximately as loud as a jet engine. One bank of alarms is located on top of the Integrated Science Center, currently under construction; the other is located at the law school, providing complete campus coverage. The Virginia Institute of Marine Science in Gloucester Point does not have a bank of alarms, although VIMS students and staff receive the phone message. Sadler said that the administration is looking into installing alarms on the VIMS campus.

p. “The irony of [the alarm failure] is they’re able to test the system in what they call silent mode, and they’ve tested it on several occasions since it was installed. Each time, it says it’s working normally,” Sadler said, adding that a silent test was successfully executed a half-hour before the actual test.

p. “So you can imagine everyone’s surprise when they pushed the button to activate it and nothing happened.” He added that a manual override was performed to check whether the horns were working. The test concluded that there was no physical problem with the horns.

p. Sadler said that once the alarm is fixed, another test will be conducted, possibly as soon as Wednesday.

p. The system costs approximately $20,000 per year to operate, regardless of the number of times it is used. College spokesman Brian Whitson said that the initial cost of the system was about $200,000.

p. “We’ve just got to keep working at this until we get it right. I’m sure there are plenty of people today who said, ‘Gosh, now I’m really concerned,’” Sadler said. “We need to alleviate that concern by showing them it can work, and we need to do that as fast as we can.”

__SA senators ask College to
explain police ‘escalation,’ Challis says tactics justified__

p. At tonight’s Student Assembly meeting, senate representatives will vote on a bill proposed by Sens. Matt Skibiak ’08 and Orlando Watson ’10 that addresses what they call “the recent escalation” of the College’s police presence at social functions. The bill, if approved, would express “deep disapproval of the WMPD’s [William and Mary Police Department] use of intimidation tactics” and demand that the College explain the logic of such policies.

p. “This bill is really to create an environment where people can rely on the police if they have to,” Skibiak said. “I don’t want people to fear the police, especially after Virginia Tech.”

p. College Police Chief Don Challis denied that there had been an escalation in police enforcement on campus, saying instead that there had been an increase in social activity this semester. “The students have just been more social this year,” Challis said. He also said that he thought more students had been taken to the hospital for alcohol use than at this time last year.

p. Vice President for Administration Anna Martin, who receives Campus Police reports and works closely with the department, said she also disagreed with this assertion.

p. “The beginning of the year is always like this,” she said. “People forget what it was like the year before.”

p. According to statistics available on the College’s police department website, arrests for liquor law violations on public property in the City of Williamsburg have increased each year from 2001 to 2005, and student judicial referrals relating to on-campus alcohol incidents have increased by 76 percent during that same time period. Crime statistics for 2006 have not yet been made available. However, since 1997, alcohol-related arrests dropped from 77 to six in 2005.

p. The College and the Williamsburg Police Department made 112 liquor law violation arrests in 2005, both on campus and in the city, while James Madison University, a school with nearly three times the undergraduate enrollment of the College, registered only 77 arrests in the same year. In terms of judicial referrals, the College recorded 308 incidents in 2005, while JMU reported 503 and Virginia Tech logged 563. Virginia Tech’s undergraduate enrollment is nearly four times that of the College. Martin said that it was difficult for her to comment on these figures without knowing the exact policies at Virginia Tech and JMU.

p. SA Senator Caroline Mullis ’09, who began researching these figures last spring, said that these similarities, given the large discrepancies in enrollment, were “ridiculous.” She also said that the rising number of incidents on a yearly basis were quite easy to see. “Things have definitely gotten worse during my time here,” she said.

p. Challis said that there is often a difference in how each institution defines and reports crimes. For example, he said that one school might record an entire group of people as a single incident, while another might report individual citations.
These efforts of the SA are part of a larger outcry on campus against what many students perceive to be a noticeable surge of police presence. SA President Zach Pilchen ’09 said that the goal was to have the police define and clarify what their role is on campus.

p. “Are they just going to be the RAs with guns?” he said. “For the sake of students, they need to change their operating procedure.”
Skibiak said that a major flaw in the College’s alcohol policy is that it ultimately encourages students to venture off campus to find alternative social outlets.

p. “Students either drive back drunk, or they walk down darker side roads to avoid police,” Skibiak said. The bill also questions the cooperation between the College’s police department and the Williamsburg Police Department, both on and off campus.

p. “I find it disheartening that you can have [the two forces] working on campus,” Skibiak said, adding that the whole idea of having a university-based police force was to save students from dealing with deferral law enforcement.

p. Many students view the city’s police department as being less student friendly and quicker to break up parties, issue citations and make arrests. Several off-campus parties, sometimes hosted by Greek organizations, are often disrupted without a warning or a noise complaint from a resident.

p. On Sept. 7, Delta Phi’s “Highlighter” dance party was shut down when a Williamsburg police officer, making a routine traffic stop nearby, heard the music and responded. Delta Phi brother Billy Mutell ’09 said that a Campus Police officer then entered the party — a dry, College-sanctioned event — and claimed that he smelled alcohol. The party was promptly broken up.

p. Challis, however, stressed that cooperation between the Williamsburg Police Department and the College’s police force was essential. “We go off-campus all the time to assist the city,” he said. “And they would go on campus if we called them. I think if [the Williamsburg police] had a way to draw students into the judicial process, that would be a good thing. But they don’t.”

p. Challis said that since the enactment of the temporary Alcohol Task Force after a reported rape incident at a fraternity complex in 2003, social patterns have changed on campus. “There’s been a huge decline in registered parties,” he said. “The events have been going off campus or underground.”

p. Over the past four years, sexual assault incidents have also increased, although Challis said this was because people felt more comfortable reporting incidents.

p. In addition to authoring the bill, Skibiak has started “Green and Gold Social Policy Reform: These Colors Don’t Run,” a Facebook group advocating changes to the College’s alcohol policy and the police force’s approach to enforcement.

p. Challis said that while he had sat down with Watson and Skibiak to discuss these matters, he believes that the Campus Police’s actions are being misinterpreted. “We just can’t turn a blind eye and let things happen,” he said.

__Provost Feiss given greater authority on everyday administration__

College President Gene Nichol has delegated certain everyday responsibilities to Provost Geoffrey Feiss in what the administration says is a normal shift of work responsibilities.

p. “This is a simple workload adjustment,” Nichol told The Flat Hat. “I have been looking for over a year for ways to be able to spend more time on the road, fundraising, doing alumni relations and working with the legislature. So the provost and the vice presidents will handle more of the routine operational decision-making. I’ll still make the major policy and operational decisions. … And, of course, it has absolutely nothing to do with the cross.”

p.The statement comes after an article and editorial Wednesday in a conservative campus newspaper, the Virginia Informer, that said Feiss would take over the day-to-day operations of the College.
Feiss told The Flat Hat that the Informer’s coverage was “a gross exaggeration of what’s taking place.”

p. Asked whether he thought there was any connection between Nichol’s recent controversies and the transfer of responsibilities, Feiss said there was none.

p. “It’s almost become a self-fulfilling prophecy,” he said. “Nichol could wear a blue suit one day and [critics] would somehow see it as justifying their claims.”

p. Feiss gave specific examples of the work that had been transferred to him. One responsibility will be filling in for the president at meetings with vice presidents of the College.

p. “[Another] good example is the hiring freeze. There is no need to involve the president in every single exemption request … and we have talked with the president about what the general criteria should be.”

p. Feiss and other administrators are also now in charge of drawing up a six-year academic and financial plan for the Board of Visitors.

p. The timing also makes sense, Feiss said. “It is very common for a new President to come, and after a few years determine what aspects of the college he needs to manage on a daily basis.”
Nichol also wanted to spend more time with students, according to the Feiss.

p. “A lot of this is just about work style,” Feiss added. “At other universities, this is common … Day to day operations are not run by the president at U.Va. or Virginia Tech.”

p. Joe Luppino-Esposito, editor in chief of the Informer and writer of the article, acknowledged this, but said the important issue was that the College was departing from its old policy.

p. “I certainly don’t think they are lying,” Luppino-Esposito said. “We just see it here one way, and they see it another way.”
Provost Feiss said that the Virginia Informer article flattered him by overstressing the powers that he had been given.

p. “But it’s not right,” he added.

__Editor’s note: this story is updated from what was originally published online. The spelling of “Luppino-Esposito” has been corrected from the original online article and the print edition__