Thousands of students line up at the OU bookstore or the OU Information Technology store each semester. However, there is always one student who finally reaches the front of the line and mistakenly says, “Charge it to the bursar.”

Students can pay for football tickets, parking tickets and more with their bursar account, but a new MacBook from the IT store hasn’t been part of the deal since January of this year.

Federal aid money once paid for anything charged to a student’s bursar account. This changed in July 2008, when the U.S. Department of Education adjusted the nationwide cash management rules.

Federal aid dollars can only be applied to what federal regulations define as “institutional charges,” which include tuition, fees and room and board.

The department implemented these changes to limit what federal aid dollars paid, said Brad Burnett, associate vice president for Enrollment and Student Financial Services.

“They just wanted those federal aid dollars to be paid for education and not other services or items that can be purchased and charged to the bursar account,” Burnett said.

The legislation took effect at OU in fall 2009, when oZONE, the online student portal, was established that semester.

Burnett said items that can still be charged to a student’s bursar account as of now are: tuition, fees, university residence halls and apartments, parking citations and permits, athletic season tickets, college print charges, health center charges, additional art supplies, lost library books and fines, disciplinary fines and election violations.

Phone representatives at OU’s bursar’s office said items that cannot be charged to a student’s bursar account are books and, most recently, OU IT store products and services.

Since 2008, purchasing these products was the only change to what cannot be charged to a student’s bursar account, Burnett said.

OU IT spokeswoman Becky Grant said unpaid OU IT store purchases made on students’ bursar accounts were causing outstanding balances that prevented students from enrolling, registering and obtaining transcripts.

Grant said sales haven’t decreased since the end of paying through bursar accounts.

“Since the change in January, sales have actually increased,” Grant said. “Most students have just switched to using a credit or debit card instead.”

Students are able to make purchases at the OU IT store with credit or debit cards only, Grant said. Cash payments are not accepted because of the danger it imposes on people carrying large amounts of cash.

University College freshman Raechel Karas was not attending OU when students were still able to make OU IT charges to the bursar account.

Karas said students not being allowed to make OU IT purchases through their bursar account can be financially inconvenient but understands OU’s reasoning.

“It’s good that we can’t charge everything to our bursar because it puts a certain amount of responsibility on us, but at the same time, it’s a pretty big inconvenience because you never really know when your computer is going to break down or when you’re going to need a laptop charge,” Karas said.