Fairfield University’s on-campus mailroom, located in the Barone Campus Center, has experienced an increase in package deliveries this year and has begun implementing new strategies to combat the pile up.
Last year, the mailroom saw about 120,000 packages arrive on campus, according to mailroom manager Paul Donahue. He says 86,000 packages have already been delivered this year and they expect to surpass the number of total deliveries made in previous years.
It’s no secret that Fairfield students, much like the rest of the country, take advantage of the convenience provided by online shopping. Each day, the United States Postal Service alone processes over 23 million packages.
Stags can get anything from clothes to toiletries to food sent by mail – and it all has to go through the mailroom. The start of the semester, especially the fall, is a particularly busy time for mailroom workers.
“What we’re finding more and more is that [students] are not necessarily bringing their stuff to campus,” Jeffrey Augustine, Assistant Vice President for Campus and Auxiliary Services, said. “They’re just having it sent here.”
To account for the increasing number of packages being sent to campus, Augustine and Donahue have made a few changes to mailroom operations with more to come in the future.
One major adjustment concerns the operating hours for the mailroom window. Packages in the mailroom used to be accessible to students only between the hours of 9:30 a.m. and 4:00 p.m. on weekdays. Now, the mailroom is open until 5:30 p.m. Monday through Thursday.
Following the removal of the traditional letterboxes from the BCC a couple of years ago, this year, the mailroom saw the addition of new package lockers which are available to students 24 hours a day.
“We’re reviewing our locker bank system,” Augustine said. “We just added banks eight and nine in August, and those have bigger, medium to larger openings.”
They also plan to assess what size packages are really coming into the mailroom and continue to make locker bank changes based on the data. One overarching issue for the mailroom is space, which Augustine and Donahue home can be combated with new policies.
“Do I think [the mailroom] is big enough? No,” Donahue said. “But space is always at a premium on college campuses.”
The two are planning on establishing more rules about how long students have to pick up packages from the mailroom and locker banks. While they’re both relatively new to their jobs at Fairfield, they mentioned that the mailroom has donated neglected packages to Campus Ministry in the past. A similar policy may soon be implemented on campus.
“We’re going to get to a point where we’re going to put down some rules with that,” Donahue said. “They’ll be pulled out of the lockers, held for a while, and if it still doesn’t get picked up, we’re gonna have to probably end up returning things over a certain period of time.”
Another change that may be coming soon is further expanded hours for the mailroom window. The mailroom staff currently includes five full-time staff members plus 15 students. Expanded hours would give the employees more time to fill lockers.
“We’re considering being open for a few hours on Saturday, because we could refill lockers,” Augustine said.
They also aim to update their website when new policies are implemented and hours are expended so students have a better idea of what to expect. Augustine and Donahue also want to make it clear that students should refrain from ordering groceries or other unsealed objects to the BCC, as the mailroom is not meant to handle these.
In addition to grocer and food orders from DoorDash, a major source of concern for the mailroom is Amazon. While deliveries from services like FedEx and UPS are scheduled ahead of time, Amazon deliveries can come at any time. This can result in overwhelm for the mailroom and lead to packages being left outside the mailroom after hours.
While a customer may be notified of an Amazon delivery within hours of the order, the mailroom needs time to process the package. Ultimately, the mailroom asks that students have patience when dealing with deliveries.
“Maybe it gets to a point where you say we need to re-expand, or find some other area where we do mail,” Augustine said. “We’re not there yet…but it’s growing. We do have limitations, and we’re doing the best we can.”
Despite the sheer volume of packages arriving on campus, Augustine and Donahue report that mailing services company Pitney Bowes was pleased with the mailroom’s operations at a recent meeting.
“We do pretty good with turnover compared to a lot of schools our size,” Donahue said. “We’re doing phenomenally, [Pitney Bowes] said, actually.”The mailroom is located on the second level of the BCC and is currently open Monday through Friday. Students can find more information on mail services on their website or by calling ext. 2302.
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