USG writes mail 'bill of rights'

The USG adopted a "bill of rights" for mail services that suggests ways to revamp the mail system on campus at its meeting Sunday night.

The bill is based on the concept of "one mailbox, one person, four years" and addresses issues such as individual mailboxes for students, a consistent four-year mailing address and package and publication delivery.

The bill will be presented to Vice President for Administration Mark Burstein today.

"We're very optimistic that all this actually will happen as the administration has been very receptive to these ideas," said U-Councilor Becky Brown '06, who presented the bill Sunday.

The bill proposes reforms to address six concerns. The first two points state that each Princeton student should have an individual mailbox with the same address for all four years on campus.

Brown said the University's current mailing system is "counterintuitive" because it is "archaic and decentralized," citing a problem in her freshman year when she didn't receive mailed plane tickets due to a lack of communication from the mailroom.

"We need to make mail something that students don't have to worry about," she said. "It would be easy to do, and, once it's done, it's something that we wouldn't ever have to worry about again."

U-Councilor Will Benjamin '07 suggested that, upon matriculation, each student be assigned a specific number linked to their residential college. This number would be associated with an individual mailbox located within the residential college during freshman and sophomore years and in Frist Campus Center during junior and senior years.

This would allow a student's mailing address to remain constant throughout their career in the University, preventing confusion caused by changes in address each year, Benjamin said.

The bill also states that mail should be handled by professional workers instead of students.

"There is a lot of liability with your personal property and your privacy, and we hand all that over to 19-year-olds," Brown said. "By hiring professional workers to handle the mail, a lot of security and privacy issues could be avoided."

The bill also deals with the issue of package delivery on campus, though USG members were divided over the suggestion that all package delivery on campus be centralized to one location such as Frist Campus Center.

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The bill is modeled after similar documents at Harvard and Yale universities.

"We ran across similar documents at other schools where mail basically isn't a problem," Brown said. "We just kind of wanted to put together something that demonstrated the dissatisfaction of students."

USG Vice President Jesse Creed '07 stressed that the mail services reform was still in the formative stages. "We expect everything to happen, but they're more like guidelines at the moment," he said.