Campus mail delivers woe
Katherine Poythress
Issue date: 3/6/08 Section: Opinion
Thanks to a recent Collegian report, we all know about the glitches with the mailbox system in Grewcock Student Union. But more to the point, the new boxes leave students' mail vulnerable to tampering and theft.
Administrators instructed students to access their new mailboxes with their room keys. However, our room keys do not work on our mailboxes - our dorm and house keys do. For a McIntyre resident, that means around 150 other women could open her mailbox without permission. For a Simpson resident, that number is much higher.
The girls in my house have joked about designating one person each day to go retrieve everyone's mail and bring it down the hill to redistribute in a more convenient place. But that would be impractical, and create unnecessary work for one person. So we all grudgingly submit to the extra work each day of going to check our own mail in the student union. If we can even remember, that is.
And since none of the boxes have names on them (only room numbers, and letters to designate the roommates), there is plenty of room for error when picking up one's mail. I might accidentally open my roommate's box, or the box of one of the girls living in Pi Phi 12. And if I were in a hurry, I might not recognize my mistake until much later.
The administration could try defending the insecurity of the new system by pointing out that mailboxes in residence halls were not usually secure, either. Some were, however. And in many of the residence halls where the boxes were not locked, they were often located close to the apartment of the house director, who could keep an eye on them to make sure nothing illicit happened to their contents.
So far, the theoretical "unifying" quality of the new mail system does not justify its relative inconvenience and insecurity, partially because of the glitches Andy Buss reported on last week.
But if they want students to embrace the new mailbox system, administrators need to demonstrate its comparative advantages over the old, more convenient and relatively secure system of mail delivery directly to our residences.
Administrators instructed students to access their new mailboxes with their room keys. However, our room keys do not work on our mailboxes - our dorm and house keys do. For a McIntyre resident, that means around 150 other women could open her mailbox without permission. For a Simpson resident, that number is much higher.
The girls in my house have joked about designating one person each day to go retrieve everyone's mail and bring it down the hill to redistribute in a more convenient place. But that would be impractical, and create unnecessary work for one person. So we all grudgingly submit to the extra work each day of going to check our own mail in the student union. If we can even remember, that is.
And since none of the boxes have names on them (only room numbers, and letters to designate the roommates), there is plenty of room for error when picking up one's mail. I might accidentally open my roommate's box, or the box of one of the girls living in Pi Phi 12. And if I were in a hurry, I might not recognize my mistake until much later.
The administration could try defending the insecurity of the new system by pointing out that mailboxes in residence halls were not usually secure, either. Some were, however. And in many of the residence halls where the boxes were not locked, they were often located close to the apartment of the house director, who could keep an eye on them to make sure nothing illicit happened to their contents.
So far, the theoretical "unifying" quality of the new mail system does not justify its relative inconvenience and insecurity, partially because of the glitches Andy Buss reported on last week.
But if they want students to embrace the new mailbox system, administrators need to demonstrate its comparative advantages over the old, more convenient and relatively secure system of mail delivery directly to our residences.
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