When Jordan Leopold started his first term at CSU East Bay in the fall of 2013, he looked into his student account and found something concerning.

He had been dropped from all of his classes, and his tuition, which he thought had been covered with financial aid, was left unpaid.

“It was either if I don’t get my financial aid, then I’m out of school,” Leopold says.

Leopold is the director of legislative affairs for the Associated Students, Inc., CSUEB’s student government organization. He is also one of two lobby corps officers from CSUEB  for the California State Student Association, where he works with state legislators and lobbyists in Sacramento and other student government organizations.

He was elected to both positions in May and August of this year, respectively, and was set to start his first term when he ran into these issues on the first day of school. Both organizations require Leopold to be enrolled in at least nine units per quarter.

When he found out he had not received his disbursement from financial aid, Leopold’s main concern was losing his new positions.

“That was probably my biggest concern; was losing my positions,” Leopold says, “because these were positions I just got, and so not even making it like through the first quarter and having that risk of losing the positions I’ve worked for was…really just weighing on my mind.”

Leopold insists that he submitted the required paperwork before the beginning of school. When he visited the financial aid office on the first day of school, he was told the paperwork had not yet been submitted.

He says he resubmitted the income verification forms once more, and was issued a fee deferment by the second week of school, which allowed him more time to pay his tuition, thus resolving the situation.

Rhonda Johnson, executive director of financial aid at the university, tells a different story. She maintains that Leopold’s documents were submitted late, and that he needed to be more proactive in checking when the verification forms were due.

“It is extremely rare that students report lost financial aid documents,” Johnson says.

The financial aid department was the first university department to convert its file storage from paper to electronic, she says.

“Of course, there are times when students submit documents extremely late and some of these students will receive a late disbursement,” she says. “For this reason, we have established document due dates. We guarantee an early disbursement to all students meeting these due dates.”

Johnson claims that 6,162 students had received their disbursement by Sept. 19, six days before school began. She adds that by Oct. 11, 82 percent of financial aid applicants had received a disbursement.

Her recommendation to students is to frequently check their “To Do List” within MyCSUEB, the online student account portal, in order to confirm their documents have been received.

Leopold is not sure what happened to the documents he says he submitted. He has no issue with the financial aid office, and was always treated in a manner that was very “kind and patient,” he says.

During the first week of school, none of the classes he originally signed up for had any openings left. So, Leopold signed up for whatever else was open and attended classes without committing the money to purchasing any of the textbooks.

If his financial aid situation was not worked out, he says he would probably have focused on personal development, primarily through networking, reading books and finding a job.

His mother, a CSUEB alumna, and his friends were worried about his situation, but he preferred to take a more laid-back approach.

“I’m more of a ‘let the chips fall where they may’, so if it happens it happens,” Leopold says, “I just got to keep moving on, and keep doing the next best thing for me.”

But he is worried many other students run into these problems with financial aid, which he thinks might be a systemic issue. Some of his friends have gone through the same problems he has been through, he says. They claim they had submitted all the necessary documents and then had to resubmit them.

“It’s really troublesome when you do everything that’s necessary, and then things turn out bad,” he says.

Albert Gomez, a student at CSUEB, shares a similar situation. He says he still has not received his financial aid.

“I am grateful for financial aid, but I’ve been ‘waiting any day now’ for about a month now,” he says. “Every time I’ve gone back they never change their story, they just tell me to keep waiting. I think I have been waiting long enough to at least see an amount [due].”

Leopold shared the story of a friend from Sacramento, who had to leave CSUEB after one year because of issues he had with his financial aid disbursement. His friend was forced to leave student housing, drop all his classes and head home.

“If my situation didn’t get cleared up, then I probably wouldn’t even be here on campus,” Leopold says.

Leopold stresses that his comments reflect only his personal experience, and not the views or beliefs of ASI. ASI does not endorse his views on financial aid.