The News Press followed up.
Glendale Community College will immediately cease collecting a $10 fee from new students for school identification cards after the Glendale News-Press informed the institution it was potentially violating a state protocol in place for at least seven years.
Drew Sugars, the college’s director of communications and community relations, confirmed Wednesday the college canceled plans to charge for ID cards and will issue refunds to students who have paid the fee since July 1. The issue was first brought to light by the Burbank Blog.
“What I’ve since learned is schools in the community college district can charge fees, but the students have to be able to opt out,” Sugars said. “Our language is not clear, so, I’m actually very glad this was brought up because this is something that we’re going to fix.”
He’s wrong. State law does not allow fees for ID cards, and there’s no opt-out option. Technically, students can opt-in to buy a special privilege card, a rather vague concept which seems problematical and is easily subject to misinterpretation.
He might be confusing this with ASB, or “student services” fees, which are legally optional as long as the college provides an easy way for a registrant to opt-out. But unlike L.A., the last time we looked GCC had also made these fees next to impossible to waive online, and has also never informed its students of this possibility.
There are benefits to possessing a card, though it is not necessary for enrollment.
“It allows [students] to check out books at the library, even borrow computer laptops, and they get discounts at events,” Sugars said. However, students without identification cards may not have access to those same services and benefits, he added.
Nope. Community colleges can’t deny services. Everybody gets a free card, and so what’s he talking about? Again, he’s probably confusing this with an ASB card.
Sugars said he was unsure how many students paid for IDs , and the school’s information technology staff did not provide a count as of Thursday afternoon…
What is unclear is why Glendale Community College continued to charge students years after the chancellor’s office called for the elimination of mandatory fees.
No one from the chancellor’s office could confirm when the policy changed, but a state student fee handbook update from 2012 listed the cancellation of mandatory fees.
Sugars said he thinks there was a “breakdown somewhere” between outside auditors hired by Glendale Community College to annually review rule changes and school staff.
GCC got hit with a successful Chancellor’s Office complaint on this back in 1999. They’ve always known the rules about ID cards, as well as the legal requirement to allow students to easily opt out of the ASB fees.
The student-fee handbook that the News Press cites from 2012 is basically a reprint of the Chancellor’s Office’s 1999 opinions. Most of the language in this area is identical, and so GCC has known about their violation for years.
Sugars said the school will not refund any student ID fees charged prior to July 1 because “it would be very difficult, if not impossible, to determine which students did or didn’t use the multiple benefits attached to the student ID when the fee was in effect.”
Say what? It’d be very easy to go back and see who paid the illegal fee when there wasn’t any “opt out” option provided during registration. Since it’s probably everyone who enrolled, then everyone gets a refund.
They charged for a free card. It doesn’t matter who used it. They need to refund the money, and a simple online complaint to the Chancellor’s Office will commence a formal investigation that will probably end up ordering a mass refund. GCC ain’t gonna do the right thing on its own.
GCC also never refunded the illegal $10 “technology fee” they used to charge every semester for computer equipment which had already been bought and paid for. That was subject to a successful agency complaint as well, and a mass refund.
In fact, the Chancellor’s Office used the GCC practice to finally come to the statewide legal conclusion that most technology fees lacked statutory authority. Glendale blew it for everyone else.
For years GCC also used to make its lower-income BOG students pay for their health fees. Up until about 14 years ago this too was illegal. But they’d been doing it for years earlier.
Burbank, California 