The individual student mailboxes are no longer with us. The decision to get rid of the mailbox units and combine the mail with the packages in the Mail and Copy Center will take effect this fall.

“One of the reasons we did this, was the amount of mail that actually came in has probably decreased, since I’ve been in the mail room, by about 85-90 percent,” Kelly Garrison, director of the mail and copy center, said. “Students just do not communicate that way anymore.”

Some advantages of the removal of the mailboxes are:

• It no longer causes the inconvenience of closing the Mail and Copy Center for a staff member to deliver the mail to basement of the library.
• It gets rid of the task of students remembering and successfully entering the correct combination to unlock the boxes.
• It eliminates the payment for replacement keys for apartment mailboxes.
• Students can now pick up their mail and packages in the same building.
• Students will receive an email when they have a package/ piece of mail.

In short, the retirement of the mailboxes may be solution to the old, and sometimes cumbersome, mailbox units.

Garrison said that despite sending out emails regarding the need to register for mailboxes and notices of awaiting mail, some students still were surprised that they had a mailbox at the end of the year.

“We had more than 40 students from the fall last year who did not pick up their mailbox assignments,” Garrison said.

Last fall, the mailboxes were moved to the library, and during the move some of the units were damaged, while others were simply becoming old and worn. This and many other factors were considered when discussing the future of the student mailboxes.

According to an email survey sent out by Garrison in October 2014, 88 percent of students were in favor of doing away with the mailboxes. This also showed that students were not substantially affected by the discontinuation of the individual student mailboxes.

“I think it would streamline things a good bit, not having to deal with the boxes and easily forgotten codes,” junior Holden Harshman said.

Many students believe, like Harshman, that consolidating the mailboxes with packages is the most effective and sensible solution.

“I am happy that the mail will be handled like packages now, because the mailboxes for me were always hard to open,” senior Chelsie Pyatt said. “I like that I will only have to go to the mail room and not have to mess with the mailboxes.”