Student Union officials released a 26-page report Monday night calling for changes to Boston University’s mail system to help correct problems students have reported with the service.
In the report, which was addressed to Housing Director Marc Robillard, Union officials suggest a different address format for BU mail, improvements in the way the school receives packages and better training for mailroom employees. The cover letter sent to Robillard requests a response to the proposal within a week.
The proposal includes a survey of 477 students and compares Boston University’s current mail system to the systems used by Boston College, Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Northeastern University and Tufts University.
Union vice president of Residence Life Sumit Mittal said the comparisons between schools demonstrate the need for changes to the current system.
‘We were the only school that did not have a website,’ he said.
The report said the ‘most significant’ problem with the system happens because computers used by the United States Postal Service misread ‘Box’ for ‘P.O. Box’ on BU-directed parcels, causing mail to be sent to automated mail-openers. Students receive opened mail as a result, the report said.
According to committee surveys, 15.4 percent of students have received opened mail during their time at BU. Mittal said a comparison of BU’s system to other colleges and universities showed BU students are the only ones who face the problem on such a large scale.
‘We’re the only school that has the whole box address,’ he said.
The proposal suggests the address format change the word from ‘Box’ to ‘Unit’ or ‘Post’ in order to eliminate confusion between ‘P.O. Box’ and ‘Box’ addresses.
The Union proposal also suggests administrators upgrade BU’s mail system and make it similar to the computerized system Tufts uses, based on comparisons made between the efficiency of other schools’ systems, and calls on administrators to implement mailroom employee-training programs in an effort to increase mailroom employees’ abilities to help students with problems.
The unofficial committee, led by Mittal and including Union senators Mike Myers and Elana Covicer, has been working on the proposal since October, they said. The committee met with officials from the Boston University Police Department, the Office of Housing and the USPS to discuss possible changes.
Myers said the need to discuss the matter with USPS officials shows the importance and validity of Union suggestions.
‘These changes have come straight from the United States Postal Service,’ Myers said. ‘It’s not just a couple students.’
Mittal said the ‘hour meeting’ with the USPS explained many reasons for misdirected mail.
According to the proposal, the main problem is the address format. Mail senders who use ‘Boston University’ instead of the street address may delay mail, while similarities between the 02215 BU zip code and the 02115 Fenway zip code often causes ‘mail to arrive at incorrect postal stations,’ the report said.
Of the students polled, 26.8 percent said they do not believe their mail arrives promptly. Nearly 60 percent of students polled reported that they have not received mail they knew was coming at least once while attending BU.
Mittal said despite the beliefs of both Robillard and Residence Safety director John Battaglino that ‘there are no problems with the mail,’ the proposal follows the beliefs of the USPS.
‘We believe the USPS because they’re experts and they run their own service,’ he said. ‘It’s just kind of like the Office of Housing thinks that they know the system better than the USPS does.’
But Mittal said he still is not confident administrators reviewing the proposal will make changes because the Union’s report was directed to what he thought were the wrong offices.
‘I don’t think that they are going to change anything,’ he said. ‘I really wanted this proposal to go to the provost’s office or the president’s office.’
Myers said he is not discouraged by the administration’s lack of support.
‘We’ll continue to fight no matter what the administration does,’ Myers said.
Mittal said the proposal is not the final answer to the problems with the current mail system, but it will strengthen awareness.
‘No matter what this proposal does, there are always going to be problems with the mail because we are a large campus,’ he said.
This is an account occasionally used by the Daily Free Press editors to post archived posts from previous iterations of the site or otherwise for special circumstance publications. See authorship info on the byline at the top of the page.
