Ombudsman Tim Griffin has had a busy first year at NIU dealing with issues and concerns of NIU students, faculty and staff.

According to the Office of the Ombudsman’s annual report for 1991-1992, there was a total of 554 complaints to the Ombudsman’s office, 353 of those from undergraduates.

The Office of the Ombudsman exists for all of NIU’s community to voice concerns or complaints about academic affairs, judicial or student affairs, employment affairs, NIU business and operations and anything else affecting the life of a person in the NIU community.

The annual report stated that student academic status, things like registration, concerns with classes and graduation requirements, was the biggest concern last year with a total of 84 cases reported.

Another big concern last year at NIU was classroom instruction. Classroom instruction deals with aspects such as grading standards, grade appeals and quality of instruction. There were 83 cases of classroom instruction reported last year.

Faculty and staff concerns made up 59 cases reported, while student financial concerns made up 58 cases.

There were also 39 concerns about parking services last year.

“This semester, our client load is up 25 percent compared to last year’s spring semester,” said Griffin.

Griffin said the complaints vary depending on where NIU is in the semester. “At the beginning of the semester, the office was getting a lot of concerns about grade appeals and adding or dropping classes,” he said.

Griffin said numbers of reported cases of harassment and discrimination have stayed steady this semester. There were 89 cases of harassment and discrimination reported to the office last year. These reports include all gender-related, sexual orientation-related and national orientation-related cases of harassment and discrimination.

Through concerns voiced to the Office of the Ombudsman, Griffin said a lot of the NIU community feels like it has no power or control over situations.

“It remains my perception that groups or individuals feel that some other group has the power to make changes and not themselves. Faculty feel the administration has the power, students feel the faculty has the power and so on. But the perception seems to be true, based on the bureaucratic organization of a university,” Griffin said.