The beginning of the year is always a hectic time on any campus—students are back all at once and each one is trying to settle into a new schedule and possibly a new housing situation. Students who live across the country or in other countries may have had to ship some of their belongings that could not be brought on planes. Other students may have tried to save money on textbooks by buying from online Web sites, which requires having a shipping address to send the packages to. Parents may already be sending care packages to let their children know they are missed, or perhaps someone had a birthday and was shipped gifts from family.
All of these scenarios—not the only cases in which packages would be received—are very relevant to the beginning of the year rush, which really puts a strain on the local post offices. Students with on-campus mailing addresses, however, are facing even more problems trying to get their items in a timely fashion. It is common knowledge that the package office in the Commons Mail Room is always bombarded with students, which can only mean it is always overrun with packages. Thus far this semester, though, it has been in even worse shape—not only are they running out of space to put packages, but their e-mail alert system is malfunctioning. This means that students could have packages just sitting around for as long as classes have been in session, and not even know that the package has arrived.
If you know that a package was sent to you, make sure to stop by the Mail Room on a daily basis in the time-frame of the package’s expected arrival. Also, chances are if your parents sent a package or something is coming your way that was unexpected, someone along the line will ask if you received what they sent.
Although this process may not be favorable for the employees in the Mail Room, no real efforts have been made on their end to ensure students receive potentially urgent packages—they have merely claimed that the system is being worked on and will be up-and-running as soon as it can be fixed. This, however, is especially problematic for parcels that contain textbooks, which are needed for classes immediately and may have been ordered a bit late to begin with, or for everyday items that some students may have had to ship ahead of their personal arrival, or for perishable items.
Why hasn’t a mass e-mail gone out stating the problem, informing students to pick up any packages they may have? The effort to seemingly sweep the package notification problem under the rug helps no party involved. The Mail Room needs to figure out what the problem with their system is as soon as possible, or it may be time for a new way of alerting students they have a package.
