Love letters, absentee ballots, birthday cards, and important documents are just some of the items Boston University students count on finding in their campus mailboxes. Unfortunately, students discover that mail never reaches them far too often. Though the BU Police Department began investigating six months ago, the school can take more immediate steps to ensure more mail reaches its destination.
While the investigation represents a effort to follow up on students’ numerous complaints, BUPD officials said responsibility for the mail theft problem probably falls on the United States Postal Service. However, it seems that mail theft occurs more often at BU than elsewhere, which makes the extra mail processing after reaching BU seem more blameworthy.
BU needs to tighten its training of mailroom employees and find ways to ensure mail gets sorted and delivered properly. Some mail could be getting lost along the way or sent to the wrong place. Because students often discard misdirected mail, more attention should be devoted to ensuring letters reach their correct destination.
Even when students do make the effort to return misdirected mail, some campus mailrooms lack a proper way to do so when the staff area is closed. For example, in the Student Village, an open pile generally develops on the ledge of the window to the staff area. This mail might never get re-sorted, and anyone could sift through it and take any valuable looking items or interesting magazines. Putting a box for misdirected mail in every mailroom is one extremely cheap way to guarantee students get more of their mail.
On the students’ end, they should return misdirected mail and make sure friends and relatives take usual precautions when sending cash or valuables. Also, including the correct box numbers when providing their addresses will help more of their mail reach its box and ease the workload for the mailroom staff.
However, they should not have to worry about getting their mail at school any more than they do at home. Regardless of what the BUPD finds out, BU should implement some easy changes to improve the current mail situation.
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