The United States Postal Service is considering cutting Saturday delivery. Here at Tufts University, Sunday is not the only day we don't get mail. In fact, we don't just wait until Monday; sometimes it's weeks before we see our mail.
On March 1, I received a letter, mailed on campus through the campus delivery service, that had been sent February 2. That's one month for a letter to move down the hill. Not only that, but because of the delay, I was prevented from submitting an application to be eligible for certain academic awards.
After four years here, the only thing I've decided to write a Viewpoint about is the mail. Overall, I've been happy with my time at Tufts. So to have an award opportunity taken away from me because of poor mail delivery is ridiculous. Cleary, our campus mail system needs revision.
My case is clearly not at the extreme. Over the course of a student's time at Tufts, he will undoubtedly apply for various jobs, scholarships, and other programs. If someone requests that an application be sent to him, will he get it in time to apply? In addition, bills sent to students have deadlines. When these are not met, a student's credit rating can be affected. Should students have their bills sent to their dorms?
Forgetting letters for a moment, how often do people receive notices to pick up packages by a date three days before they received the note? Aren't the notices supposed to arrive with ample time for students to actually get their packages? How long are those packages sitting there? If they contain anything perishable or important, you can forget about seeing them in time.
So why are there so many problems? A large number of problems come from mail being delivered to the wrong place. I live in Hall House. Granted, this is not the wisest choice of names for a house when there are many residential halls on campus, but that's another issue. We get countless
amounts of letters addressed to Hill Hall. I'm afraid to know how much of my mail goes to Hill and other dorms. Other friends of mine live on Curtis Street in Tufts housing. They receive mail for Curtis Hall on a regular basis. All I'm asking is that the people sorting the campus mail take an extra minute to actually read the address labels.
Clearly, there are a number of workers in the mailroom, but maybe there aren't enough. Given the large number of students on work-study, there doesn't seem to be a shortage of available workers. If the volume of mail is too high for the current staff, more people should be hired.
Last year, a number of proposals were suggested to improve the service, but so far, I haven't seen any change. With the candidates for yesterday's Tufts Community Union Senate's presidential election claiming they want to improve life at Tufts, this is an issue they need to examine. Administrators
and professors send letters out to other places on campus all the time, so campus delivery service affects them, too. If the student government, with its connections to the administration, would get involved and speak to the right people, I think improvement is possible.
I won't pretend that bad delivery service will affect the number of new applications received each year, a main concern of many administrators. But what if the letters to those accepted were sent through campus mail? They might never receive them and be able to accept their admission, leaving a very small freshman class and a confused administration.
I hope that both students and administrators realize the impact of the campus delivery service. We may live in a highly technological age where e-mail replaces much of the traditional mail service, but the physical mail is still important. If the United States Postal Service can effectively reevaluate its system, then so can Tufts.
Karen Forseter is a senior majoring in quantitative economics. She is a copy editor for the Daily.
