6A
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THE UNIVERSITY DARY KANSAN
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bureaucratic complexity", he said of the Unclaimed Property Act. "It's one of those things where we know who the students are and we know what's in their account. It's easy for us to get them their money"
Beak'Em Bucks by the numbers
Beak 'Em Bucks allows students and staff to make purchases on and off campus using their KUID cards. It's part of the process to produce a "one-card" system for multiple functions. The card is used for on-campus meal plans, library services. Beak 'Em Bucks, as a photo ID and can be linked to a Commerce Bank checking account.
As of late October, almost $300,000 sat in the Commerce Bank account that stored Beak 'Em Bucks funds. The University manages and tracks the individual accounts. That figure also includes $10,000 in interest accumulated since the program began. The University keeps earned interest. While some of the balance belongs to current students who are spending that money each day, account activity during the two-year period from July 2004 to June 2006 showed a $200,000 difference between deposits and spending. During that time, more than $1.3 million was deposited while only $1.1 million was spent. Accounts that have not had deposits or withdrawals for 12 months are considered inactive by the University.
When the University expanded the program to off-campus businesses, deposits nearly doubled from the 2004-05 school year to the 2005-06 year. The program now includes 25 off-campus merchants, with several being added this semester. Matt Bogner, a spokesman for Off-Campus Advantage which handles off-campus transactions and expansion for Beak 'Em Bucks, said the program had already exceeded the average of 20 off-campus locations for a program like this.
The Unclaimed property Act
The Kansas Unclaimed Property
Act requires businesses or government agencies to surrender abandoned property to the Kansas State treasurer's office. That office then holds the property so owners or heirs can claim what is rightfully theirs. Property can include cash, bank accounts, stocks, bonds, royalties, the contents of safe deposit boxes and other personal holdings. The state treasurer's office maintains a searchable, online database people can use to find forgotten or lost money. Currently, the University doesn't report any funds from Beak 'Em Bucks to the state treasurer.
According to the law, property held by the government is considered abandoned after one year of inactivity or lack of contact from the rightful owner. Beak 'Em Bucks started in 2003.
Eakin said the program did not fall under the Unclaimed Property Act because the system was like a prepaid service. He compared it to campus meal plans where students pay for a certain number of meals at the beginning of the year even if they don't eat that many meals during the year.
However, Beak 'Em Bucks can now be used at more than two dozen locations off campus, including restaurants, gas stations, a tanning salon and a textbook store.
Hanna, the deputy assistant treasurer, said inactive cash accounts were not similar to prepaid services and should be reported.
"This is the student's money; they just access it through a card," she said in an e-mail interview. "The University is splitting hairs at the expense of the students."
Eakins said the University did not want to look or act like a bank.
"That opens up a whole Pandora's box of regulation and oversight that we don't want to get into," he said.
As the program grows, Eakin said the University should look at ways to contact students about their accounts. He noted that bringing a bookstore into the system had increased the likelihood of students putting larger sums into their accounts.
Wellsle said it sounded like a bank account.
"You can deposit money, you can spend money, you can request a refund," he said. "You're not paying for a service; you're putting your money in a convenient form."
Nancy Miles, director of the KU Card Center, said the University made no attempt to contact students who may have money in inactive accounts and had no plans to do so in the future. Students can check their balances and transaction histories through the online student portal, she said.
Hanna said letting the accounts sit with no activity after 12 months was unacceptable according to the law.
David Kidd, manager of the card center at Wichita State University, said in his 10 years working in this area, he couldn't remember anyone ever bringing up the issue of unclaimed property laws, either inside his school or from other institutions.
WSU uses a system that links student cards to Commerce Bank accounts in students' names. Hanna said when cards linked directly to a bank account in the student's name, compliance with the Unclaimed Property Act would fall on the bank, not the university. The University of Kansas also allows students to link their cards to Commerce Bank accounts, though that function is separate from Beak 'Em Bucks accounts.
Who owes whom?
The University may not know how much money sits in abandoned accounts, but it does know how much money students owe to the University and can use Beak 'Em Bucks accounts to get that money.
To close a Beak 'Em Bucks account, the University charges a $15 fee to receive a refund. It then subtracts any tuition or fees owed to the University from any refund, according to terms listed on the KU Card Center's Web site. Refunds may be requested only in the spring semester or when students are leaving school.
details
» Deposits — $451,394.61
» Spending — $381,966.73
» Difference — $69,427.88
July 2004 to June 2005
July 2005 to June 2006
»> Deposits — $883,016.76
»> Spending — $749,211.09
»> Difference — $133,805.67
The card center had processed 119 refund requests since the beginning of the program.
The system also can disable the card — and the Beak 'Em Bucks account — of any student who is not enrolled at the University. Only active students and staff can access their Beak 'Em Bucks account. Miles said this was an automated process within the University's databases and could not be used to identify inactive accounts.
The terms also allow the University to charge a $10 maintenance fee to accounts after they have been inactive for one year, although Miles said that fee wasn't yet being charged. The database system that maintains all the accounts doesn't have the ability to assess the fee yet, but the University plans to update the system to charge the fee, she said. Once it has the ability to charge the maintenance fee, the University should be able to also identify inactive accounts, she said.
Jude Braun, Chicago freshman,
said that she liked the convenience of Beak 'Em Bucks, but that the fees sounded like another way to nickel and dime students.
"I think we pay enough in every single other way," she said.
The University also knows how much money it earns from the card system.
Revenues and costs
The largest revenue comes from Commerce Bank. As part of the contract that allows checking accounts to be linked to KU cards, Commerce guarantees a revenue stream to the school. That revenue comes from a plan that involves bank accounts
held by faculty, staff and students. For accounts created at the on-campus Commerce branch and accounts through a benefits package offered by Commerce to KU staff, the University gets 0.2 percent of purchases made with debit cards linked to those accounts. The University also collects 0.08 percent of debit card purchases made through KU Checking accounts, free student checking accounts that are maintained off campus.
Since the inception of the program, the University has collected more than $130,000 from this revenue sharing. Commerce also made an up-front payment of $105,000 to the University and included $50,000 worth of blank identification cards.
Off Campus Advantage, which handles off-campus transactions, also pays a kind of revenue sharing to the University. OCA charges a transaction fee to businesses that take Beak 'Em Bucks. Bogner declined to give the amount of the average transaction fee. The University collects 70 percent of that fee while OCA keeps 30 percent. Since Beak 'Em Bucks went off campus in November 2005, students have spent more than $114,000 off campus and the University has collected just more than $6,000 from those transactions as of August of this year. Those figures include revenue from Dominoes Pizza, which has a direct contract with the University to take Beak 'Em Bucks for on-campus pizza delivery.
The program has collected more than $250,000.
Eakin said Beak 'Em Bucks hadn't paid for itself yet. He said judging from other universities' experiences, as the program grew it should be able to do a little better than break even, allowing the University to offer the service without having to pay for it.
The one-card program has cost at least $700,000 to start and maintain. That includes the original equipment costs, card readers, fees, training and software.
Kansan correspondent Courtney Farr can be contacted at editor@ kansan.com.
Edited by Patrick Ross
UNITED NATIONS
It also lifted an arms embargo against the country to allow the force to be equipped.
Somalia gets force protection in conflict
UNITED NATIONS — The U.N. Security Council on Wednesday authorized an African force to protect Somalia's government against an increasingly powerful Islamic militia, hoping to avert a broader regional conflict that could draw in neighboring countries.
The U.S.-sponsored resolution urges the Islamic movement that has taken control of the capital and most of southern Somalia in recent months to stop any further military expansion and join the government in peace talks.
It also threatens Security Council action against those who block peace efforts or attempt to overthrow the government. No measures were mentioned, but they could include sanctions.
BY EDITH M. LEDERER ASSOCIATED PRESS
The arms embargo against Somalia was imposed in 1992, a year after warlords overthrew dictator Mohamed Siad Barre and then turned on one another.
A government was formed two years ago with the help of the U.N., but it has struggled to assert its authority against the Islamic militants.
Critics of the resolution, including some non-governmental organizations, accuse the Security Council of taking sides in the dispute between the government and the Islamic movement, which the U.S. has accused of harboring wal-Qaida suspects.
U. S. Ambassador John Bolton said the United States, like many other countries, is concerned about the deteriorating security situation in Somalia and the possibility of a wider regional conflict. He said the regional force would be "a key element in preventing conflict."