Two weeks after the EMU post office’s controversial closure, a handful of University businesses and student groups are starting to feel the effects, for better and for worse.
One unlikely benefactor is the Duck Store. A portion of the mail volume no longer funneled through the EMU has ended up at the customer service counter at the back of its street-level floor, where students and staff employees help customers mail letter-size parcels and flat-rate boxes.
Unlike the larger EMU office, the bookstore’s small counter does not process international mail larger than letters or any pre-wrapped packages more than 13 ounces in weight.
Duck Store Accounting Supervisor Juanita Bassett said the volume has increased nearly threefold since the EMU office’s Jan. 14 closure, when measured by the amount of mail bags picked up by the U.S. Postal Service at the close of business each day.
“We used to have two (bags) go out at 4:30 p.m., and now we have six, and they are already almost full,” Bassett said. “We started doing (flat-rate boxes) in early December knowing that the EMU office was closing.”
Farren Johns, a University psychology major and Duck Store student employee, said many new customers have flocked to the Duck Store’s Postal Service counter out of necessity and frustration in light of the EMU office’s discontinued service.
“People come here saying they can’t go to the EMU (office) anymore,” Johns said. “There are a lot of people who are upset about it. Every day we get five to 10 people complaining about it.”
On the short end of the stick, student groups’ fears that international students would be hit hardest by the closure seem to have come true. Concerns that foreign students would have to traverse the perils of the U.S. postal system was a driving force behind ASUO and International Student Association efforts last December to petition against the closure.
Canvassing efforts leading up to a Dec. 1 rally outside the EMU office’s front doors yielded more than 1,000 faculty, staff and student signatures, which were included in a rejected petition mailed to the Postal Regulatory Commission.
The Mills International Center was partially involved in the signature collection, and international center staff have worried all along about the international students having to travel off campus to mail packages and letters to their home countries.
Sara Clark, associate coordinator for the international center, said the center receives much more mail than it sends, including the international magazines and periodicals on display in its office.
“We receive a lot of mail because of the publications we receive,” Clark said.
Though the EMU office has only been closed for less than a month, Clark has already received queries from international students about where to bring important packages.
“I had an international student ask me today ‘How do I mail something?’” Clark said. “I told her about the blue mailboxes and she asked ‘Are they in use?’”
The student had been trying to mail important immigration documents and felt uneasy about dropping the parcel into the two weathered curbside mailboxes now occupying East 13th Avenue outside the EMU Craft Center.
One campus department slated to gain more traffic from the EMU closure is the University’s Baker Downtown Center, located at East 10th Avenue and High Street, which handles the University’s inter-departmental mail.
“(The Center) is getting a much bigger portion of mail,” EMU Assistant Director Donna Leavy said.
Rhonda Morgan, assistant director of the Baker Center’s Printing and Mailing Services, said that the center has not yet seen a vast increase in mail volume, but that a slight increase in traffic is possible.
“It could be going up, but it’s not a great volume,” Morgan said. “It’s not impacting our ability to provide our services.”
The Baker Center does not handle personal mail from individuals and serves a function similar to Fed-Ex and UPS for academic departments. Therefore, much of the EMU office’s lost commerce will likely go to other mailing services outside the realm of University postal operations.
“It isn’t going to affect us because our mission is not to provide postal services to the University as a whole,” Morgan said.
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