In January, I had to make an agreement with my landlord after realizing I would not have the money to pay rent on time.
I rely entirely on the athletic scholarship I receive from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. With that money, I pay my rent, electric bill, groceries, and other expenses of living in a place as expensive as Hawaiʻi. For the past three years, that scholarship has always been deposited before the start of each semester.
Until this spring.
In early December, I received an email from the UH Information Technology Services informing me that a new system, called eBanner, would be implemented. At that time, I didn’t think it would directly affect me, since the project was scheduled to be ready before classes resumed.
To complete the update, UH took several systems offline between Dec. 11 and Jan. 3. At the same time, students got warning emails to be prepared during that period of shutdown.
When the semester began, I still hadn’t received my financial aid.
Then I came across an email from Nikki Kāhealani Chun, the vice provost for enrollment management, specifically alerting student-athletes that payments would be delayed due to the new implementation of eBanner.
My initial reaction was confusion, as this was something I’ve never experienced before. After weeks without any sign of payment, I felt powerless about the situation. I contacted my parents in Brazil to ask for temporary financial help, and it was a very difficult decision given the current exchange rates between the U.S. dollar and Latin American currencies, but that was the only way.
The email made it clear that I was not the only person affected. According to the email, the major update to the student system had affected financial aid processing, course registration, tuition payments and access to academic records.
When eBanner officially went live, UH acknowledged in an email that several students were still experiencing problems with the system and registration.
Chun’s email does not give any expected date for the deposit and even states that the money may arrive in installments, and that it would be distributed in waves of prioritization.
On Jan. 26, I had the opportunity to talk to Garret Yoshimi, the vice president of information technology, responsible for the update to the new system.
Yoshimi said the previous system could no longer receive security fixes or required updates, making it unreliable for processing federal financial aid.
“We don’t get security patches, we don’t get any updates,” he said.
According to Yoshimi, postponing the migration was not feasible. Without the upgrade, UH would be relying on software incapable of processing federal financial aid required by the U.S. Department of Education.
“That’s not the desired outcome,” he confessed. “When we do this kind of work, the objective is to be totally invisible.”
Yoshimi stated that the main reason for the system working in “waves” was to reduce the risk of compound errors during the transition.
He acknowledged the inconvenience caused to students.
“All of the disbursements that are due to students are being processed now,” he said. “We shouldn’t have put our students through that pain in the first place.”
As the semester progresses, I and other student-athletes continue to wait for our scholarships to be deposited, while dealing with our personal expenses.
