Direct deposit will give student-workers the option to have their paychecks deposited directly into their bank account.
"It will save student-employees the time, money and hassle of receiving checks in the mail and then depositing it themselves," said Park. Student-workers will still receive a payslip informing them of the money they have earned and that it was sent to their bank account.
Park cautioned that the new system will only be beneficial if a majority of students use it, thus reducing the payroll costs of the comptroller's office instead of raising them.
"Additionally, [direct deposit] could run into difficulties if the students who use it change banks frequently, therefore overloading the office with bounced checks from accounts that don't exist," said Park.
No new software or computer programming would be needed to implement the new system. Forms will be available next year so students can submit their banking information to the comptroller's office.
"About 1200 members of the current student body have been employed by the College at some point in time," said Park. "The system will be especially useful for students who have to send checks to their family to be deposited in their banks at home," he added.
In other AAS news, the Association was unable to conduct a meeting this week due to its failure to produce a quorum of senators. To officially begin any meeting, the constitution requires that two-thirds of the senators be present. Only 16of the 27 senators twenty minutes after the scheduled start time.
AAS Vice President Bob Razavi '03 began the meeting, hoping to have a sufficient number of senators by the end of announcements, which were the fourth item on the agenda following the call to order, attendance and official introduction of Judiciary Council (JC) member Taamiti Bankole '06.
Razavi explained that the drop in attendance was not unusual, but it was also inexcusable.
"We saw similar attendance slips in March and April each of the last two years in the Senate," said Razavi.