Multi-campus survey reveals Honorlock remains unpopular

Smrithiupadhyayula

MercuryStaff opinions of 156 students on the continued use of monitoring software like Honorlock post-quarantine.

I feel like she’s really good at basically every support hero.” More than their new support player, the UTD Overwatch team has found a new confident way to bring the pain to the competition: getting to the enemy as fast as possible and killing them basically at the enemy’s spawn. Originally just a fun idea, it became more than a clippable moment for the team’s social media. ATEC Senior and tank player Garrett “Jukebox” Porter said that it became a new defined playstyle that was unique to them.

“We came up with one strategy and we’ve really been enjoying it now … we just like to run it all the way down as fast as we can. That’s been our entire strategy is just, “Have

The delay was due, in part, to the multistep, recently adjusted reimbursement policy set up by the Office of Budget and Finance (OBF) and enforced by the Student Organization Center (SOC). The OBF policy requires that student organizations register as a vendor within UTD’s PaymentWorks system to receive reimbursement, as opposed to getting a check to deposit into an organization’s bank account. On top of having to obtain a tax ID and set up a club bank account, the club also had to register for an account with PaymentWorks. That process, biomedical engineering senior and Contra Corners VP Talissa Chapin said, forced the officers to rush after being given a five-day deadline to register.

“We have to do that within five business days of receiving that email. And once again, it’s software we’ve never used before. There’s a lot of paperwork. We have to get bank information, tax ID, it’s just all over email. They’re like, ‘oh, let us know if you have questions’, but then it takes a while to get back to us. And the frustrating thing is when it’s not really a two-way street, our organization had less than five business days to get this done. Whereas the SOC, even though on some documents they say they’ll take 20 business days to get our refunds back. They took, in the case of our December dance, all the way until February 9 to actually reimburse us, which is over two months,” Chapin said.

While Chapin said that SOC dragged its feet with reimbursement, that was only one part of the full reimbursement process. Yet another delaying factor is the requirement that OBF process the reimbursement after

SOC verifies the request. Pair that with winter break, and it becomes clear how the process can incur additional delays on top of the 20 business-day wait outlined in policy. This reimbursement inefficiency isn’t new to student organizations. Math doctorate student Jonathan Popa, an 11-year Comet, recalled waiting for reimbursements in his time as Pokémon League and Math Club president nearly a decade ago.

“Oh, the reimbursement process was so slow,” said Popa. “I think three to four months was the worst.”

But the reduction in SOC responsivity has been aggravated by staffing shortages since the pandemic. During that time, the number of organizations grew to over 400; meanwhile, in the fall of 2021, SOC only had one full-time staff member. That staff member, Assistant Director of Student Organizations Tineil Lewis-Moore, said that while they may be late to respond, SOC is still doing their best to help.

“One: We take ownership of that. If we were late to respond, we were late to respond. We definitely apologize for not responding in a timely manner. But then two: if you’re not able to get a response from us, whether it be through email or phone call, again, our doors are always open. This is exactly what we’re here for, to support these organizations, to make sure that they’re successful, to walk them through the process and to develop ways, to make sure that our communication is clear,” Lewis-Moore said.

But students say SOC’s ability to help is essentially neutralized by the combination of delays and inefficient policies, and it’s not just the policies of the OBF that came under student criticism. Computer science senior Alex Obenza said that the timeline for submitting SOC reimbursement forms is both unclear and unrealistic.

“The handbook (Student Organizations

SEE SOC, PAGE 9