Mercyhurst, like most universities, is moving toward the technological age. With modernization comes reliance on technology.
One of these technological advances on our campus is electronic housing contracts instead of a hard copy that you physically sign. The question is whether this change necessary?
The newest debate considers whether or not online contracts benefit the student body.
According to Mercyhurst’s webpage, there are more than 3,000 students enrolled at the university.
Printing enough contracts to support the student body would get very costly. It is also more environmentally friendly to use the online contracts. From the perspective of the school, it would be more cost effective to have online contracts instead of hard copies.
Are the savings worth the glitches and crashes that could happen to the students along the way?
My first experience with filling out the online housing contract has been difficult.
On Friday, March 27, when the housing contracts came out, my group “leader” filled out the contract and something went wrong, leaving me attached to a contract that does not exist.
Although the housing offices are very helpful, it is still scary to students that they might not get to pick where they want to live next year. My situation was corrected, but had been a hassle to have fixed.
On this side of the spectrum, having a hard copy of the housing contract sounds like a better option for the school, since there are many things that could happen between hitting the submit button and the contract making it to the housing offices.
On the other end, students who have never had an issue with the online contracts will have a very different opinion.
It is extremely easy for college students to access electronics. When asked, one student said “it was very simple to do online with everyone doing their own parts individually instead of finding time to meet and fill it out together.”
In the end, it comes down to whether or not you are a “technology person.”
If you like having paper copies of important documents to save somewhere, the online forms will not be your friend, but if you are computer savvy, filling out the contracts will be a breeze.