Money Matters: Students question processing of monthly payroll

Southern University Human Resources is known for setting a high quality standard for the employees and their student workers, but unfortunately those standards were not maintained according to students of the Electrical Engineering department. After two and a half years of carrying out research for the department and being promised consistent pay through grants funded by the university, students have opened up about their frustration with the alleged payroll mishandling.
Dondy Dorlus, a current Electrical Engineering student says he begins to notice payment differences in spring of 2019, after being given a grant. He along with other students begin carrying out research creating projects and portfolios, and teaching students while also running a lab with some high school students. Problems didn’t begin to rise until Dorlus noticed missing payments. “I started to notice that after my first semester of working and getting paid I began having issues with time sheets and missing payments. We’ve gone to the department, called them personally and sent out plenty of emails. Their job is to process those payments.” After reaching out with the help of other representatives, Dorlus was still unsuccessful in receiving payments.
Dailynn Thomas, another frustrated student, fed up with the lack of concern from payroll officials says time submission wasn’t the problem. “I beg working for them as the grant started. We would simply upload our hours just as a work-study student would through banner. After we uploaded ours payroll was supposed to let our money out bi-weekly. With that came so many problems, there was very little communication between the department. When ever we would go to payroll or HR we would always hear that it would be handled, but here we are two years later.
Fred Lacey, chair of the Electrical Engineering Department and other executives of the university have all reached out on the students behalf, but have not been able to locate the missing funds. Lacey says the department has multiple external grants used to pay students to perform various aspects of research. “ once I was alerted that there was a problem, I checked to see if the time sheet was submitted. In most cases it was submitted and approved, I printed it out and took it to payroll to see if they could get their money. They were unsure of the time. So we were referencing. We experience issues regarding whether or not it would be processed or was processed.”
Benjamin Pugh, Vice chancellor for financing and administration says beyond the controversy about the payroll department, him along with other representatives have done their jobs to execute between students and other departments. “The young man came to see me around February, after listening to his claim i was deeply concerned. I immediately sent an email to my payroll manager and asked her to look into the situation. I also received a call from his department head asking me for assistance in the situation. We were already looking into the situation with students.
Pugh also says communication between the departments has to get better, making that the leading way payments have been incomplete. Time sheets being unapproved within the system was another cause of students payments falling short.