What Comes Through the Dorm Mailroom? Pretty Much Everything!

Well, we certainly hadn't thought through the implications for residence halls of students ordering more and more things on line, so this article by Jonathan D. Glater in The New York Times was enlightening:

Dealing with the increased mailroom activity is also costing colleges money. Pomona College — whose mailroom handled the ant farm, air-conditioner and barbecue grill — spent thousands on a system to scan bar codes, which sends students e-mail messages notifying them when they have packages in the mailroom. Pomona has also expanded its mailroom, making room for more packages.

At SUNY Binghamton, where the number of packages received increased to 57,000 last year, from 33,000 in 2002, officials invested about $25,000 in a bar code scanning system to track packages from the moment of arrival to the time students sign for them.

“We’re hoping that we’ve seen the worst of it,” said Larry Roma, associate vice president for facilities management at the university.

SUNY’s Purchase College has also invested in such a system, at a cost of $37,000. Meanwhile, Arizona State University decided it could not even handle students’ deliveries itself, and handed over mailroom operations to UPS.