Zoey Freedman: One mail room on the Hill is a hassle, not a help

The beginning of the new school year means many students are ordering their textbooks online and having them shipped to the dorms.

But the continual delays caused by the new centralized mailroom for the residential halls have prevented students from reading for class and turning in their homework on time.

“I needed to pick up one of my textbooks, but the line was way out the door, so I waited until late at night, when no one would be there, to come back,” said Sharon Peng, a second-year sociology and psychology student.

The new mailroom, which opened on Sept. 19, collects all mail in one location at Delta Terrace, rather than disbursing it among various smaller mailrooms in different residential halls.

The fact that students must wait and return multiple times to be able to receive their packages and letters is inconvenient and inefficient.

The new mailroom setup adds unnecessary hassle to already hectic student schedules. Picking up mail should be a largely effortless act, but now students find themselves planning their schedules around package pick-up and delivery.

Mail is important to students. Whether it’s a letter from home or a textbooks for their classes, students need their mail and are justifiably frustrated when they can’t get it.

UCLA Housing should consider returning to the old mail system because not only was it more convenient, but it was more efficient than the new system, minimizing frustration from students.

Steve Dundish, east area manager of UCLA Housing and Hospitality Services’ Rooms Division told the Daily Bruin last week the new mailroom was instituted because bringing all the mail to one location is more efficient both space-wise and time-wise than the old mail system.

However, the long lines and annoyed students indicate it is simply not the case that the consolidated system represents an improvement.

To alleviate these problems, the Office of Residential Life is instituting a new package logging system, which is supposed to scan barcodes on mail to notify students immediately upon arrival and cut down the time it takes for students to receive their packages.

But the new software should have been put into place before the year started in order to be ready for the influx of students and their mail.

The facility already has a reputation among students for its long lines and for turning people away because their letters or packages haven’t been found yet.

Some students have been waiting to receive their mail since they arrived on campus.

“I’ve been waiting for a letter since I moved in, and they keep turning me away by telling me that they’ll have it sorted out in two to three days,” said Rachel O’Keefe, a second-year biology student.

In addition to long lines and misplaced packages, students have found the location of the mailroom to be inconvenient.

Previously, mailrooms were located in five different locations, meaning students could pick up letters and packages at their convenience. Now, students have to plan ahead to make trips to get their mail, only to find that they have to wait in an extremely long line.

These are essential problems with a centralized mailroom for a facility that houses over 10,000 students.

It shouldn’t be this difficult to pick up a single letter from home or a textbook for class. The old mailing system on the hill was efficient enough, and students were satisfied.

Returning to the old system would not be step backwards, as the centralized facility was never a step forward in the first place.