Red tape at ODUS frustrates student groups

This was the type of call Deepika Govind ’10 said she received “literally every week” the winter of her sophomore year from a henna artist awaiting payment for painting tattoos at the October street fair hosted by the South Asian Students Association (SASA). The Office of the Dean of Undergraduate Students (ODUS) repeatedly told Govind, who became SASA’s president the following spring, that the payment was being processed, she said. But the artist’s phone calls did not stop until she was finally paid — in March.

Govind is one of several student group officers who said that working with ODUS is unnecessarily bureaucratic and that the University’s reimbursement process moves too slowly.

“[Working with ODUS] is a headache,” said Ethan Ludmir ’11, reflecting on several drawn-out dealings with the office as treasurer for Tigers for Israel (TFI).

But Associate Dean of Undergraduate Students Thomas Dunne said the vast majority of the several thousand transactions flowing through his office each year run smoothly and that his staff works quickly to resolve problems that do arise. “It’s not in our interest to have an angry henna artist,” he pointed out.

Dunne, who declined to discuss specific problems, said that generally, problems arise when “there’s some sort of breakdown in communication” either within the student group or between students and vendors. He noted that many problems involve missing documentation and that most checks get processed within 10 business days.

ODUS does not make any direct reimbursements or payments to vendors. Rather, it forwards invoices to the University’s “financial transaction structure,” Dunne said, adding that “a lot of students have the ... misperception that we cut checks from this office ourselves.”

Several student group representatives said their experiences with ODUS have been positive — Pehchaan officer Jehangir Amjad ’10 went so far as to call them “wonderful” — but others were more critical of the office’s timeline for reimbursements.

Though Dunne said that he “empathize[s] with students when they say ‘it’s a bureaucratic process,’ ” and that he would “like [the process] to be less time intensive,” he does “feel much better” about it than he did two years ago.

Since that time, Dunne said he has worked with University director and associate treasurer for operations Jack Yuncza to “make this an easier process for students.”

To that end, ODUS got a credit card for student groups to use to make large purchases and instituted same-day cash reimbursement for students.

But for other transactions, including making deposits into student group accounts to paying vendors, student groups must work at the University’s pace.

“In my mind, this is a part of a student’s learning,” Dunne said of the process. “It’s good for students to realize that this is how organizations like Princeton work, that … when you’re doing reimbursements for travel, when you’re working at a consulting firm, it’s not going to be going to your boss and giving him the receipts and then the guy opens the drawer, with a personal checkbook and says ‘Oh, here’s your reimbursement.’ ”

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For SASA, however, the repercussions of the slow payment went beyond answering phone calls.

“We tried contacting [the henna artists] again for an event this year and they were like, ‘No, we can’t do that. Last year was unacceptable,’ ” Govind explained.

Encountering red tape

Former TFI treasurer Rebecca Kaufman ’11 said that last year, when TFI was arranging an event to be held at the Wilson School, she encountered numerous bureaucratic hurdles. At one point, she was filling out two forms online — one for the Wilson School and one for ODUS. The Wilson School form required that she have the event confirmed through ODUS before she could reserve a room, while the ODUS form required her to have the event location reserved before they could confirm the event.

When Kaufman went into the ODUS office to clear up the confusion, the staff was very helpful, she said. But, looking back on the experience, she still has a nagging feeling that “there should be a faster way.”

But Dunne said that with limited staff, his office must focus its attention on helping students with pressing issues.

“By design, we have to be reactive to students who are putting something together, and it’s on fire,” he explained. “We do a lot of problem-solving for students.”

He added that he is conscious of the effort that student group officers make that benefit the entire University.

“I know that the same person who comes in with their receipts is often the same person who postered at 2 in the morning for 45 minutes, has been buying trash bags and ice, and all this other stuff,” he said. “I always talk with our staff about keeping that in the front of your mind: That this is part of a much larger responsibility that usually a small number of students are carrying.”

Ludmir said TFI has had inconsistent experiences working with ODUS, citing two contrasting reimbursements for the same event, when TFI hosted Israeli academic Yossi Klein Halevi last November.

Working with ODUS in preparation for Halevi’s visit, Ludmir was able to give Halevi a check for his honorarium on arrival. But when Halevi incurred additional travel and food expenses of around $100, it took ODUS three months to reimburse him.

“The two [expenses were] divvied up in such a way that even though he told me, ‘I need $100 for food plus travel,’ ODUS wanted it divvied up so that food was a certain portion and travel was a certain portion and each would get paid differently,” Ludmir said. “And [Halevi’s agent was] calling me every other day, [saying] ‘Where is this money? We need to fill out tax forms.’ ”

Ludmir said the experience left him dissatisfied with the University bureaucracy, adding that the requirement of splitting food and travel expenses seemed “as asinine as anything could possibly be.”

Dunne explained that students who routinely work with his office usually grow accustomed to its requirements.

“The students that do regular business, they definitely get into a groove where this works, and they have systems in place, whereas groups that do more sporadic programming … then I think it can be more of a challenge,” he said. “We want to illuminate this process so that even if you remain a critic of it, you still have some sense that this is how an organization the size of Princeton functions.”

Chicano Caucus president Oscar Castro ’09, who has organized multiple events through ODUS, said he has found the office’s reimbursement process to be inconsistent.

When the caucus hosted the same band on two separate occasions last spring, Castro noted, the reimbursement schedules were radically different.

When the band performed in April at the East Coast Chicano Students Forum, they were reimbursed within two or three weeks, he said. But then, when they played again at the Latino graduation on June 1, it took the University more than a month to pay the band.

Dunne said ODUS is still looking for ways to make the work of student group officers easier.

“If students are saying, ‘It’s still not working,’ then we really have to really focus on ‘what other opportunities are there?’ ” he said.