Oh for fuck's sakes

Not sure what happened there, somehow the blog submitted itself without me doing anything. So, as I was saying...

My UWA account has been locked for not paying my tuition fees.

Last month I got a letter warning me that if I didn't pay my then overdue fees my computing facilities would be locked. Ok, that's understandable. What I didn't understand was how I had not been told prior to that letter when my fees were due by. If I don't know when to pay them, how can they expect me to? I didn't even know how to pay.

So I rang them and had an argument with someone in the Finance department. I pointed out I didn't have £550 to simply throw away at that moment in time, what with not having had a chance to budget or anything. She agreed to extend it to the start of March when, I said, I might be able to pay it. Problem is that they insist that I send them the full payment, which is bankrupting. That's most of my monthly pay cheque - and being in the finance department they should know that too.

Well at the start of the month I couldn't really afford to pay, and so I didn't. My plan was to pay at the start of next month - I've had to keep a VERY tight grip on my finances all month so that next month I can afford to pay for the privellage of being a student that works for the Uni, and who gets taught nothing for a year.

Then this morning I tried to connect to my "M" drive from my work machine. It failed. No surprises there, it often does that. I try again, it fails again. This goes on for a while, but I can't really be bothered to poke at it right at that moment, so I try to log in to Central to get my email.

Access denied

Hmmm, my typing skills aren't up to scratch this morning then - I must have typed the password wrong. I try it again.

Access denied

Hmmm, clearly I need my early morning cup of tea more than I had originally thought. I type the password again.

Access denied

My first thoughts were that I should not have ignored those emails prompting me to change my password. But then the password wasn't due to expire until April - I'd only received the 2nd of 8 emails so the password couldn't have expired. Then it struck me.

My gaze shifted to the letter to the left of my keyboard where, in bold lettering, were the words

Re: Outstanding Tuition Fees - £550.00

and - even worse still - the words

Fuck.

I rang the helpdesk to try and get this confirmed, but the really weird answerphone message that was in fragments of Welsh followed by English made me dizzy so I rang the Finance Department instead.

One was not amused. One was bloody livid in fact, and I think it may have shown in my voice. I'm a member of staff, I need my computing facilities in order to get on with my job. Ok, I hadn't paid my fees. But they were aware that I was struggling to afford it. I'd made that very clear. They pay me 10k a year, and then take £550 back off me again. Why not just pay me 9.5k? That would actually make my life considerably easier in the long run.

Having now got back into my account I have had discussion with others and they tell me that I should have had various bits of paper at various times - none of which I have seen.

Now this probably is a direct violation of the Information Services terms of use, but I don't care (and I can't even find the terms to check anyway) but I personally think the University has acted in a completely unfair way and in a totally incompetent way.

The £550 I owe. Just what exactly is this fee for? What is the Uni doing for me exactly? I'm not attending lectures. I'm not taking part in practicals. I'm not making use of the Advisory service. I am not using their public workstations. The ONLY service I receive from the University is access to the Internet by way of their Central server - which I am entitled to as a member of staff. Ok, so the University sends a member of staff ONCE in the entire year to see how I am getting on in my placement. So they have expenses to cover. Well I can assure you it does not cost £550 to get from the Penglais campus to the Llanbadarn campus. It costs about a quid on the bus, or you can drive here for probably even less.

So if the average student pays £1100, and I pay £550 then that would suggest that I should be getting approximately half of what the other students are getting. But then the only real service I receive from the University is the Internet access which I require for my job, so the University have a responsibility to ensure I have that. And of course I could just go get a free shell account and that would be FREE. So could someone (preferably from the Uni) please explain why I pay this money anyway. I'm already being paid a pittance to do a technical job. What else do they want from me?

I'm really angry about this. I'm not even convinced they have the right to deny me access to my own private materials. Everything on my userspace is mine, written by me, copyrighted by me. By locking me out they deny me access to my own materials. Surely there are laws against that sort of thing? And surely they are required to give me a warning first?

I'm sick of being the punchbag. One day I'm going to ring the University up and tell them they can stick their fucking qualification up their arse and go get a job.