By Lauryn Longacre, Contributing Writer
Susquehanna’s on-campus mailroom went under reconstruction this past summer, replacing student mailboxes with a bigger mail room and implemented an entire new mail receiving system.
Discussion surrounding the reconstruction began in early spring of 2019 and the construction was mostly completed by Aug. 6, despite a few minor setbacks including the cover for the receiving window, according to general services assistant of the mail room, Tami Long.
“They wanted to consolidate some areas and have less waste with the mail,” Long said.
“This way we’re only delivering first class mail and periodicals.”
By the end of last year, Long disposed of nearly 3,000 pieces of junk mail left behind by students in their individual mailboxes.
Long said that the new order of the mailroom lessens the amount of the junk mail and waste that accumulated in lockers by the end of the year.
Sophomore Jonathan Mickens expressed his opinion on the new setup.
“I would probably prefer the set up last year since we had our own actual mailboxes.”
Mickens expressed how he felt that the mail services offered last year didn’t cause a lot of problems and also his confusion on as to why there were changes made to the mail system.
Mickens mentioned “the long line you have to get into, especially later in the semester when you have to pick up the course catalogs, like the mail, newspapers. That’s going to be a pain.”
However, Long said that the change to the system offered more than last year’s individual mailboxes.
She noted that there is “more access, the majority of the packages go into the locker system [to the right of Hawk’s Nest],” allowing students to access their packages from their lockers for longer periods of time.
Long expressed no concerns for the new way of handling student mail.
“I think that once we get the new system down it’ll work well, it’s just learning a new system at the beginning of the school year when we’re very busy,” she said.
Long believes that once the first few weeks of school are over and all the textbooks are received and returned, the lines will become less of an issue and wait times for students will decrease.