Starting this fall, the College will automatically send student account bills to students' permanent addresses instead of through Hinman mail.
Associate Controller Jim Seidensticker said the change should ease the number of students unable to register at the beginning of a term because of unpaid bills, as well as the number of late charges assessed to students.
"Students have asked us to send the bills to their home addresses anyway," Seidensticker said. "They have always had that option."Students' parents, too, already seem to prefer having the bills sent to them.
"Every time we have registration, we have parents who say they didn't get the bills," he said. "Overwhelmingly, parents request to get the bills."
Students can request to have their bills sent to their Hinman Boxes if they want to see the bills before their parents, Seidensticker said. All bills will still be sent in the students' names, he said.
Some students prefer to see the bills before their parents "if there's something on a bill that has more relevance to the student than the parent," he said. "But usually that's not the case."
The policy change is consistent with what other schools do in terms of student billing, he said.
Seidensticker, who has been at the College for 20 years, said the policy of students' receiving their own bills preceded him, but he speculated on some of the ideas behind it.
"Students say it's because Dartmouth wants to save on postage, and there is some validity to that," Seidensticker said. "But it's not a significant savings in money."
He also notedto the policy, which is outlined in the Organizations, Regulations and Courses book, of using bills to teach students financial responsibility.
"It sounds nice, but parents say their kids don't have the $27,000, they do," Seidensticker said.
