Alumni using the “e-mail for life” service offered by the Office of Alumni Relations were notified last week that starting on November 15, use of the account for web-based or POP access will cost $14.95 per year, while the option to forward mail to a different address will remain free. Alumni have been voicing complaints over the changes, and according to Jeff Schanz, the director of alumni relations, the department fielded hundreds of calls last week.
“The vast majority of folks who have taken advantage of the system are disappointed, but understand” the reasons for the changes, Schanz said. He continued that he would reconsider the decision if he felt it was annoying people, but said that he has been given positive feedback on the changes and pointed out that 500 alumni have already signed up for the new service.
The changes have been made in response to growing demand for the service, Schanz explained. It was first offered six years ago as purely mail-forwarding, but soon after was changed to include a 15 MB web-based account. Schanz said that the service was manageable for the first few years, but as the number of users shot up over the years, the cost of maintenance became overwhelming and changes were necessary.
The department concluded that they would need to charge $14.95 for the system, which works out to approximately $1.25 per month. All the money will go to the service provider, a Los Angeles-based company called Mail2World. At the same time, the limit on storage was increased from 15 MB to 500 MB, and POP3 support was added. Schanz said that they felt that the new services, in addition to the continued use of the “prestigious” domain (alum.rpi.edu) and lack of advertising, would make the cost worthwhile. Some alumni have disagreed.
“I’m not complaining about the fee,” said Ed DeGuiverian ’03. “It’s not a large fee.” He continued that he is not interested in any of the changes, and would like to keep the service exactly as it was. He suggested that the OAR offer two options, one just as it was and another with the changes and a subscription fee.
“I haven’t decided whether to pay for it yet,” he said. “But if I do decide to pay for it, I do know that that will be my donation for the year.”
Schanz said he understands the concerns the alumni have about the changes, but said he doesn’t feel the cost is unreasonable. “I’m arguing with people over a dollar per month,” he said. He also said that “e-mail for life” is not a privilege or reward, just a service, and that no one is being forced to pay for it.
Aaron Hamai ’03 pointed out that the OAR should have anticipated that the number of users would grow as more and more students graduated, and that they should not have promised that the service would be free if they could not maintain that agreement. He suggested that the alumni already using the service should be “grandfathered” with a free service, with the charges taking hold only for new alumni.
Schanz, however, said that his office was looking at ways to offer the service to new alumni for free for a few months, “so they’re not getting hit with a $14.95 charge right after you graduate.” No decision has been made, but he said that they were looking at a few months of free service.
Other alumni have voiced concerns about the new @RPInet service that the OAR is offering, which provides a web directory among other services. Schanz cautioned that they should not be concerned about the $14.95 going to pay for that service at all, and that he felt that that service was worth far more than $14.95 per year.
At present, approximately 9,000 alumni use the “e-mail for life” system, with two-thirds opting for web-based service and one-third using forwarding. Alumni currently using it have until November 15 to pay the $14.95 or switch over to forwarding.
