Misinformation results in disenrollment

Change in policy causes student to lose one year of school, pushes back graduation

By Sylas Wright

An administrative change combined with poor advice spelled disenrollment for Tyrell Gillett.

“I didn’t want to leave,” Gillett said after learning he had been disenrolled from Fresno State. “They made me leave.”

Gillett landed a job at Mammoth Mountain Ski Resort—in the eastern Sierra Nevada—for the 2004 spring semester. In an effort to find out the proper procedure for skipping a semester while being able to return for the following one, the junior business major sought guidance.

“I heard something different everywhere I went,” he said. “I asked the business department. I told them I just wanted to take one semester off and come back in the fall. They told me they didn’t know. They sent me to admissions, and admissions sent me to an adviser.”

Finally, somebody had an answer to his question. Gillett said if only it were accurate, he would still be a Fresno State student today.

“The adviser told me that as long as I went to one semester per calendar year,” Gillett said, “I’d still be fine. I could still register for classes in the fall.”

With the assurance that his status was active, Gillett checked the Fresno State Web site periodically from Mammoth Mountain to find out his registration date. A date never appeared.

Upon returning to Fresno in May, Gillett checked with admissions.

“They looked at their computer and told me I had been disenrolled,” he said. “I was no longer a student, and if I wanted to come back, I’d have to reapply in August for the spring of 2005.”

Vivian Franco, director of Admissions, Records and Evaluations, explained the reason for Gillett’s disenrollment.

“Students who took the spring semester off only had until Feb. 1 to reapply,” Franco said. “Because of the increasing demand for students to be admitted to Fresno State, from new students primarily, we’ve had to set our application deadline earlier than ever.”

Franco said last year the application deadline was May. The year before that, it was late July.
But nobody Gillett asked knew about the application deadline.

“In terms of the confusion,” Franco said. “I do think there was some, but I don’t think it was widespread. But I do know there are a few students who got caught with that problem, and I can tell you for sure, that should not have happened. That’s the best I can tell you.”

Regarding the rule about taking one semester off per calendar year, like the adviser told Gillett, Franco said, “I don’t see anything in writing.” “That has been brought up to us, and we know that that’s occurring, and that kind of advice was given out to students. We know that some offices thought that it was OK to take a semester off.

“So we’re trying to make sure that the information for all the advisers, the departments, the faculty, that they all understand the procedure that was put in place.”

Franco said in cases where students are advised incorrectly, she tries to make accommodations. If Gillett would have brought the issue directly to her, Franco said, she probably could have worked out a solution.
“The people at admissions told me there was nothing I could do,” Gillett said. “I was disenrolled. I didn’t know I had to go talk to the boss.”

Gillett is now working as a carpenter for CBB Construction and plans to take a full year off, then reapply and return to Fresno State in fall 2005.

The application fee is waived for returning students, and if a student faces the same disenrollment problem Gillett did, he or she still has one option for the current semester—Open University.
Open University, located in the Education Building, allows students to enroll in regular university courses on a space-available basis, capping them out at seven units.

“The drawback of that is that you have to crash all of your classes,” Gillett said. “I figured that was impossible to do. My prior experiences told me that.

“So that’s why I decided not to go. I’m just going to apply for the fall semester like I did four years ago when I got out of high school.”