Photo by Randy Rataj
Students may not know it’s now up to professors to provide scantrons for their classes, making it easier on students and eliminating the cost of providing free scantrons from Student Government’s budget.
According to Dr. Donna Mohr, chair for the Campus Technology Committee, the UNF Provost Office has now taken over the cost of providing scantrons to students.
Marianne Jaffee, executive assistant to the Provost, said that the cost of scantrons for this fall was $8,000, in conjunction with the leftover scantrons from last semester.
Jaffee said faculty and staff received an email informing them of the new policy.
“Student Government leadership decided that they didn’t want to be involved anymore in distributing scantron forms because they didn’t want to bear the cost,” Mohr said. “That’s my understanding.”
According to Jaffee, funding for the scantrons is coming from the Center of Academic Affairs’ budget.
Jaffee said the Provost Office did a trial run of distributing scantrons in Summer 2014, and now the Provost will have that responsibility indefinitely.
Dr. Earle Traynham, interim provost and vice president for Academic Affairs, agreed to take over the cost from Student Government to them, Jaffee said.
According to SG Advisor Victoria Shore, SG spent $10,000 in the 2012-13 fiscal year on testing supplies and were stocked up at the fiscal year. In the 2012-14 fiscal year, SG spent $4,989.70 on testing supplies.
Academic Affairs got $12,000 in additional non-recurring funds in the 2014-15 budget to pay for scantrons. This is according to Joanna Norris, UNF Director for Public Relations.
Mohr said about two years ago, SG wanted a universal scantron policy to simplify things for students, but this was not possible because there are two types of scantron readers on campus. This would mean purchasing new machines that could all read the same scantron.
After finding the universal scantron policy wasn’t financially viable, Carlo Fassi, SG president from 2012-14, said SG originally proposed that Academic Affairs fund scantrons and blue books for students. He said they reached a compromise that Academic Affairs would pay for scantrons while SG would continue to provide blue books.
Fassi said his main issue was that students should focus on the exam material, not the exam materials. He said SG tried to stay away from using money from the Activity and Services Fee for academic issues because that money is meant for extracurriculars.
Because the issue was confusion between the variously colored scantrons, Fassi said it shouldn’t be a problem for students to get a blue or green book, since the color makes no difference in that case.
On Sept. 4, SG issued the following statement to the Spinnaker from current SG President Joseph Turner:
Students not only supported this measure, but proposed it and lobbied for it to be implemented as a pilot program over the summer semester.
After early success of the program over the summer, we worked with the Provost to ensure scantrons would continue to be provided in the classrooms from this point on.
Student Government recognizes that scantrons are unlike any other school supplies because they are essential to a student taking a test and professors have chosen to give a test in a format that requires this additional resource. A student can pass a class without a textbook but cannot even take a test without scantrons.
Email Erica Santillo at reporter17@unfspinnaker.com
Email Lydia Moneir at news@unfspinnaker.com
9/11/14 at 4:40 p.m.-Updated with facts about the SG scantron budget.
