Government shutdown creates uncertainty at UTRGV

The UTRGV community remains observant of President Donald Trump’s decisions, predominantly via his Twitter account, on the government shutdown and its unclear future.

Trump began the shutdown Dec. 22, 2018, when Congress denied his request of $5.7 billion to fund the wall along the southern border of the U.S.

In an interview with The Rider, Mark Kaswan, a political science professor, explained how the government shutdown can cause a chain of events that may affect the
UTRGV community.

“The federal workforce in the Rio Grande Valley is pretty large compared to other places because of the border and, so, people in the UTRGV community have family members that are employed by the federal government in various ways and depend on that income,” Kaswan said.

The shutdown will certainly depress the economy because families that are being affected are not spending money and neither are federal agencies, which causes a ripple effect, he said.

Students at UTRGV have not held back in expressing their concerns for their community and financial security.

“I fear, overall, for our economy, for the misuse of money,” junior Max Johnson said.

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is one of the government entities closed and plays an important part of the process for university students requesting financial aid. While the department remained closed, uncertainty and miscommunication began to rise on social media.

Due to the government shutdown, students who were selected for the verification process after submitting their FAFSA application were unable to request their tax return transcripts or verification of non-filing, Associate Director of Financial Aid Operations Jael Perez confirmed.

As of last Wednesday, the U.S. Education Department issued an electronic announcement, allowing the staff of the Financial Aid Office to accept the following documents in order to replace what was originally requested:

–signed tax return copy instead of the tax return transcript;

–a signed statement by the independent student or the parent of a dependent student;

–and a copy of the IRS form W-2 or an equivalent document.

The electronic announcement was published by the Office of Postsecondary Education, with the purpose of reducing the “burden on students and families that have difficulty in obtaining documentation needed to verify their Free Application for Federal Student Aid/Institutional Student Information Record (FAFSA/ISIR) information.”

Before the announcement, Financial Aid staff members were unable to help certain students to complete their FAFSA process, waiting for the Education Department to allow the verification process.

“They finally made the decision to, basically, change the rules so that we are still able to do the verification, despite the shutdown,” Perez said minutes after the announcement became public.

Perez recommends that students check their financial aid status directly with U Central and to not assume their situation is the same as anybody else’s.

“Every student situation is unique,” Perez said.

Kaswan said that besides financial aid, research funding is also a concern because federal agencies may not be able to provide monies.

Glorimar Colon, research liaison officer for the Division of Research, Graduate Studies & New Program Development, said funding proposals will not be reviewed until several federal agencies are back to operations and faculty who work at federal facilities may experience delays in their work.

“Everything else seems to be running on normal operations as they usually do,” Colon said. “There is no major impact, I would say.”

On Jan. 4, President Trump held a news conference at the Rose Garden, where he confirmed that he said the government will remain closed for “months or even years,” if necessary.

“Absolutely, I said that,” he said. “I don’t think it will, but I’m prepared.”

Kaswan said, “I can’t imagine this continuing for months and years, that’s just it’s pretty unimaginable. My expectation is that it’s probably going to be resolved within a week or two, but it’s hard to say.”

Perez said that even if the shutdown affects the community, UTRGV’s services are available to work with students and faculty.

UTRGV offered federal government employees and their families free admission to the men’s basketball game against Grand Canyon University last Saturday.