Student records returning home from school

Green Day asked, "Do you have the time to listen to me whine?"

We've received a couple membership records for students returning home from BYU for the summer. One only had the city, but no street address. Another had the street address of our meetinghouse. Apparently, no effort was made by the sending clerk to group the student with his family, leaving that task to me, the receiving clerk.

I suppose it really is easier for me to group two records with their families. I understand that the sending clerk is probably moving out hundreds of student records, and it would probably take him days to do it properly. So I do forgive him.

drepouille wrote:it would probably take him days to do it properly

Assuming the student ever responds to his messages asking for a complete address...

Billy Joel would respond that "it seems such a waste of time" because sometimes the BYU clerk often doesn't even hear "I'm movin' out."

You recognized that it's probably easier for you to do that work, but it would be better if you just requested the record in the first place. Let's look at this from the perspective of the BYU bishop:

He's got 100 or so records that are now sitting in his ward and the students are gone. You are asking that his clerk contact all of those students to get their new address information. You also want him to ask if they're living with a parent or other family member so that they can be grouped with the correct household. sbradshaw already pointed out that you will have trouble getting many of the students to answer their phone or reply to an email.

Next, you want him to process an individual move out for everyone who responded, entering the new address and determining the appropriate unit if there are overlay units (YSA ward or conventional ward?) and then making the determination whether they should be in their own household or added to an existing household.

Once he's done with that, he still has to figure out what to do with all of the records he didn't get a response for. Should they be moved back to the prior unit (which may be a different YSA unit at school)? He could try the parents' unit, but that might not be appropriate for some family circumstances. If he wanted to send them to the parents' unit, what if the parents live in different units? What if the parents aren't members of the Church? Perhaps they're living in Orem with Grandma for the summer.

Let's play with some numbers:

• 100 students
• 10 minutes per student to try to get address and parent information
• 50% response rate on new address information
• 4 minutes per student to move the record
• 20 additional minutes per student to try to figure out how to deal with non-responders
• 5 minutes per student to move the record to the next unit or to address unknown

That is over 38 hours of work for the clerk to move those 100 students out. Imagine a full work week spent doing nothing but moving 100 student records. Don't forget to include an hour per night swilling Cherry 7-Up (such a good burn) to drown the sorrows of the day's work.

That is even more complicated in light of the current situation where a large percentage of the students scrambled and moved off campus over the course of a few days. One Sunday, they have church and everything is normal. Seven days later, most of the student population is just gone and church is cancelled. There are a lot of home-ward clerks who haven't thought through the current situation to the point of saying "hey, maybe I should check and see what students' records need to be moved home," leaving the entire burden of getting those records in the right place on the YSA bishops and clerks.

Evan Stephens' proposed solution: "Let us all press on." Don't let those YSA ward clerks steal all of the blessings by doing all of the work.

In the case of the two records I received, I simply grouped the students in their parents' household. I understand that the process could be much more complicated for others.

In the past, returning students or their parents have told me that the student has returned home, and I gladly request and group the record with the family. In this case, no one in these families contacted me. The records just appeared.

drepouille wrote:In the past, returning students or their parents have told me that the student has returned home, and I gladly request and group the record with the family. In this case, no one in these families contacted me. The records just appeared.

That's a big issue with the current situation. In our house, students were in church on campus on March 8 and everything seemed normal. The following Sunday they had moved out of the dorms, were home, and no one is going to church anywhere, so it isn't registering with clerks or parents that maybe they should get records moved.

I looked out of curiosity and my daughter's on-campus ward now has eight members -- the bishopric. It looks like 30 to 40 records were requested by the new wards. The clerk had to identify new locations and move almost 90 records, including 60 over this last weekend.