Students were temporarily unable to have passports processed at the campus post office.
Eric Weitz/Lantern reporte
Passport processing at the Ohio State branch of the United States Postal Service is expected to resume Wednesday after the service was temporarily suspended for 12 days.
Some post offices offer passport processing services to their customers, and the branch on OSU’s campus offered those services until March 12, when service was temporarily suspended, USPS spokesman David Van Allen said.
Van Allen said the service was not available because the only State Department-certified clerk at the OSU branch transferred to another post office.
“The postal service is basically an extended service of the State Department when it comes to processing passports,” Van Allen said. “They (post office employees) have to be certified by the State Department in order to process passports.”
Van Allen said certified clerks at local post officers are able to verify that passport application information is properly formatted and then witness the applicant sign the paperwork before preparing and mailing the materials to the State Department.
Because of “employee training requirements and the job bid process per the collective bargaining agreement,” Van Allen said a certified clerk was not immediately available to fill the position at the OSU branch after the former clerk bid to transfer to another post office.
“We had to retrain and get others certified, so it takes a while,” he said.
Van Allen said a certified passport clerk is scheduled to transfer to the University Post Office on Wednesday so passport processing can resume on campus.
