Saint Mary’s introduces new payroll system

By KATELYN WALDSCHMIDT a ssociate news editor

This semester, saint mary’s introduced a new payroll system for student employees. The new system, oracle, replaced the banner system which the college has been using since 1999.

This system change comes after several student employees had issues last semester with not receiving their wages. morgan martin is a resident assistant and hall director assistant in le mans hall and she did not receive payment for either of her jobs until late in the last semester.

“so as paychecks were going through, i just wasn’t getting paid anything. so i contacted payroll about it.” martin said after she spoke to payroll it was supposedly fixed but she had to wait a month until her next paycheck and when it was supposed to come, she still didn’t receive anything.

“eventually i just went into payroll and talked to a lady and she was very nice about it and very understanding,” she said. martin said that the payroll employee helping her just seemed to hit a button and it was fixed, a seemingly too simple fix after months of issues. while she did eventually get paid, this had happened to her the year before as well. “This was an issue the year before too. i didn’t get paid until march last spring,” she said. martin joked that there must be something wrong with her and her account but this has happened to other resident assistants as well. chief information officer Todd norris explained that issues like these will become a rarity with oracle in place. however, norris also said that this transition was in the works before these problems arose last semester.

“oracle provides some automation and data transfer automation that allows for the process from once the time has been approved until the money arrives in your account,” he said.

“The reason for making the change has to do with modernizing the campus,” he said. “while the banner system was great in 1999 and has made many improvements over the years, it maybe didn’t keep pace with what we’d hoped and expected.” norris continued to highlight features of oracle that students