Cancelation of e-mail services present no problem, a welcome change
With two weeks of the new year already under our belts, time seems to be slipping away at an alarmingly fast rate.
March is on the horizon, which means the stress that comes with finals and the end of the quarter. Still more might associate March with the coming of spring and the much-anticipated spring break. March also marks the time that the students of DU will no longer have e-mail support provided for them.
To me, though, it seems logical that many students would have had an e-mail address prior to attending DU and therefore would be able to set that e-mail as their preferred off-campus address. Even if, for some unknown reason, a student did not use e-mail before enrolling at the university, there are numerous free e-mail services available, such as Gmail or Yahoo! Mail.
Forwarding e-mails to these off-campus services still allows students to retain their firstname.lastname@du.edu addresses and even continue to send e-mail from them; the only difference is the lack of a DU-hosted service.
This knowledge should be a comfort, as most of the importance of a university-issued e-mail account comes with the @du.edu extension, which helps lend credibility to students when sending e-mails not only to fellow students, but also to teachers and prospective employers.
Truthfully, I have never used DU’s webMail service. When I was issued my account, I simply forwarded it to my existing Gmail account and continued to operate from the e-mail I had always used.
Rather than viewing this discontinuation of service as a problem or injustice, I find it more sensible to make the switch. Be glad that DU can now save the $350,000 it would have spent on a new e-mail host and perhaps spend that money on something that cannot be fixed by simply typing in a new preferred destination for university e-mails to be used from.
University eliminating invaluable e-mail support for students, alumni
By now, everyone knows about the coming DU e-mail changeover, where DU students will lose their university e-mail accounts and instead have their mail forwarded to a third party provider.
DU e-mail changeover, where DU students will lose their university e-mail accounts and instead have their mail forwarded to a third party provider.
This plan, to many DU students, seems surprising and unprofessional given the simple fact that many other universities provide this simple service to their students.
I enjoyed having a separate DU e-mail where I could keep my school messages separate from my personal ones. It was also nice to have everything regarding DU self-contained on one website. Although DU plans to maintain the e-mail addresses themselves for the moment, it is a worrisome thought that at some point in the future DU might see the opportunity to make more cuts and discontinue the e-mail mirroring service that it will be providing in March, which will allow students to keep the @du.edu address.
These might seem like relatively small bickerings, but it speaks to a greater issue of priority. Given how quickly tuition seems to rise at DU, no one is going to attack the university for trying to save some money, approximately $100,000 a year plus an additional $300,000 for every five years to update various technologies to keep the system from becoming obsolete.
Nonetheless, these funds are not going to go towards lowering tuition or getting rid of the student technology fee. Instead, the money is going to go towards “other projects.” It makes one question whether the students are the priority as they are being forced to give up a this service.
However, DU should be at least commended for the fact that everyone will maintain their firstname.lastname@du.edu address because that would have been a disaster for the University as many students and alumni like having the school address simply to impress future employers with the prestige that comes from having a university e-mail address.
