The Syracuse University Bursar’s Office is working on a new system which would allow those paying students’ campus bills to view their payment information online.

A new program called ‘Share My Access’ is in the process of becoming available through MySlice for parents, guardians or anyone else responsible for students’ bills. The bursar’s office plans to eventually stop sending bills through traditional mail, using e-mail only to students and bill payers granted online access.

Fliers will be hung on campus to notify students and sent home with bills in standard mail to parents. Students will be responsible for creating a user identification and a network identification password to grant access to up to three people of their choice. Students will also be in charge of deciding what these users will have permission to view.

‘The students will be calling the shots, and they can change what they grant their bill payers permission to see at any time,’ said Associate Comptroller Jim Crimmer. ‘That’s what I like. You get to choose who has access to your records. It’s not all or nothing.’

The way the system works now, students must give their personal user name and password to the people who pay their bills in order for them to view their financial holds and records online through MySlice.

A rough sample of the new Web site includes the options of viewing academics, class lists, grades, holds and financial records.

‘You can’t tell me someone wouldn’t want to go online and answer questions on the computer rather than call,’ Crimmer said. ‘It will be available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It will be helpful to students whose parents live in a different time zone or even a different country.’

Syracuse junior exercise science major Justin Jiunta said he would rather not have the responsibility of relaying billing information to his parents.

‘My mother and father both have access to computers, but neither of them are comfortable being billed or paying bills online. My mom doesn’t really know how to use a computer, so it would go from my dad to my mom and get lost in the shuffle,’ Jiunta said.

Payment online is not something that Jiunta said he trusts.

‘My dad won’t give his credit card number online, and not all parents use computers,’ he said. ‘Some students are idiots and probably won’t pass the billing information along to their parents.’

Jiunta said he would allow his parents to view all of the options on his account, except for grades.

‘When I tell my parents my grades, there is always an explanation to go along with them,’ Jiunta said.

The ideal access situation for Jiunta would be for his parents to just view what’s owed without an explanation of the charge next to it so he could lie about it, he said. Juinta has in the past been restricted from registering for classes because of a bursar hold of unpaid parking tickets.

Mary Jiunta, Justin’s mother, has access to a computer both at work and at home. Mary Jiunta said she would prefer a bill in the mail as opposed to e-mail because she fears people would be able to hack into it on the computer.

‘I would like to think I have done my job as a parent and that Justin would be responsible enough to pass along any billing information he would receive by e-mail, but that’s not always a guarantee,’ Mary Jiunta said.

The Office of Financial Aid hopes to eventually get on board with the bursar’s office for Share My Access.

‘With financial aid records available online in a secure area, students and parents will be able to see anticipated aid and when it is disbursed, options that only the students have at this point in time,’ said Kaye DeVesty, the assistant dean of financial aid.

‘What I hope is that it gets easier for people to do business with the university in any way,’ Crimmer said.

Published on September 27, 2005 at 12:00 pm