University revamps student mail system

Netflix junkies plagued by an unreliable mailing system on campus now have a reason — besides no late fees — to relax. Starting next fall, students will have the same mailing address for their four years at the University.

Currently, each undergraduate has two different addresses while in a residential college and then one box in Frist Campus Center as an upperclassman. With the new system, all undergraduates will have mailboxes in Frist to which both packages and letters can be sent.

To accommodate the increased need for mailboxes, the mail space and package room in Frist will be renovated over the summer, said Ben Hammond, director of planning and administration for the Office of the Executive Vice President.

"Since Mail Services delivers in Frist, one of the impacts will be that [they] will deliver all student mail in Frist," Hammond said, explaining that mail will no longer be sent to student-run mail rooms in residential colleges.

Packages can still be sent to student rooms through UPS, DHL or FedEx. Frist will handle packages sent through the USPS in addition to those for which students are unavailable to sign. To handle the larger volume, the package room will have Saturday shifts and extended evening hours during the weekdays.

Long time coming

The catalyst for the policy change were concerns voiced in Spring 2005 by former USG vice president Jesse Creed '07 and former U-Council chairs Becky Brown '06 and Amy Saltzman '05. Upon hearing that students were tired of unreliable and delayed mail delivery, the University responded.

"We agreed that we would study the problem and gather data," said Hammond. "One of the challenges was that before, we had only heard anecdotal stories. We thought it would be important ... to determine the extent of the problem in order to measure it."

A study was conducted with 25 students, five per residential college and five upperclassmen. Ten letters were mailed from Princeton Borough to each student and the time of receipt and delivery was recorded for each one.

The University determined that mail sent to the residential colleges took a day longer on average than those sent to Frist. Some letters were lost and some were delayed. Hammond attributed the delays to mail sent to old addresses, which must subsequently be forwarded.

"It became very clear very quickly that with three different addresses over four years it is very complicated. Forwarding is a significant problem," he said. "So we really think that having one address for a student the entire four years will make a dramatic difference in the kind of delivery of mail and quality that students ask for."

USG vice president Rob Biederman '08 was glad that the administration understood and addressed the problem promptly, noting that he "couldn't count" how many students have emailed him with comments about the delays in the mail system.

"It's very nice to see that concerns brought up then are being solved in such a timely manner for such a complicated matter," Biederman said.

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Creed was also happy with the new system, noting that the administration seemed to be addressing the right issues — privacy, timeliness, and efficiency — and put in place exactly what he and Brown had envisioned. He disapproved of the rationale for the previous mail structure, however.

"I think that it took the administration too long to realize that the old system was frankly unsatisfactory," Creed said in an email. "They were informed for too long by the principle that mailboxes in the colleges would somehow make them special or act as a cohesive agent for intra-college conversation."

"We're really excited that we could respond to student requests, and that we listened to their concerns, which turned out to be on the mark," Hammond said.