U. to offer mail collection services for summer

Students may lose fewer packages and letters in the mail thanks to two new policies.

This summer, Penn will offer mail collection services for students living abroad over the summer. The optional service will begin on May 1 and end Sept. 1.

Previously, only first-class mail that was sent to students’ on-campus addresses over the summer was forwarded to students’ addresses in the United States, said Business Services executive director Doug Berger. All other mail was returned to the sender.

This created a “gigantic black hole” for international students and students living abroad over the summer, who lost phone bills, credit cards and invoices in the mail, said Undergraduate Assembly Speaker and College junior Cynthia Ip, who worked on the initiative.

The Undergraduate Assembly and Assembly of International Students approached the University a year and a half ago to change the policies, Ip said.

It took a long time for the project to come to fruition because it was a “complicated situation that involved a lot of legal issues,” she added.

Business Services has made arrangements with Datrose, Inc. ­— the company that manages mail and packages at Penn — to organize students’ mail this summer.

The service will come at no extra cost to students or the University, Berger added.

Students who sign up for the program will receive mail that was accumulated over the summer starting Sept. 1. Those who do not provide an address may collect their mail from college houses until Sept. 15.

There are more than 1,000 international undergraduate students, said College junior Florentina Dragulescu, president of Assembly of International Students. Dragulescu expects many to sign up for this program and is “very excited.”

“I would have had a limbo period for mail over the summer before I move into my fraternity house in September,” said College freshman Daniel Riband, who is from Switzerland. “I will definitely sign up.”

While the mail-forwarding option will be available to all college house residents this year, the program may be restricted to those remaining on campus in future years, Berger said.

Another program to begin in September will offer students living off campus the option to deliver packages to Penn during the school year.

Although the details have yet to be finalized, the service is estimated to cost three to five dollars per package, Berger said.

“This is more expensive than we had hoped,” said College senior Adam Bloch, a former UA College of Arts and Sciences representative who worked on the initiative. However, the price is “negligible” for valuable parcels that students order, such as laptops.

Bloch lived in the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity house for two years, and in that time he experienced “all kinds of problems with packages.”

When there was no one home to accept a package, Bloch would have to make a trip to the post office. “It was obvious that something needed to be done,” he said.

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