ALUMNI TO KEEP E-MAILS FOR FIVE YEARS

By Alexandra Yeboah

Alumni will be allowed to keep their Ryerson e-mails for five years after graduation, despite a top Ryerson executive getting his wires crossed with the university’s tech department in asking for the change.

Alumni currently get a grace period of 17 months after graduation before their e-mail accounts are deleted. This policy was meant to limit the number of alumni e-mail accounts, said Brian Lesser, an assistant director at Computing and Communications Services (CCS).

Adam Kahan, VP of University Advancement, asked CCS to extend the grace period to five years earlier this year, but miscommunication between the two meant the changes only happened on Tuesday.

“It’s almost certainly our fault in CCS. The five years [was] not in effect and we owe Adam a big apology,” Lesser said.

Now that alumni have their e-mails for longer, “it’ll be easier for [alumni] who have a Ryerson address to search for jobs and keep in touch with the university,” said Kahan.

At the University of Toronto, all alumni keep their e-mail accounts for life, provided their account is not abandoned for more than six months.

Lesser was ambivalent about allowing alumni to keep their e-mails for life.

“If Ryerson does decide to provide alumni e-mail accounts forever we would want to plan out the service properly so that it did not become an administrative nightmare for us,” he said.

Some Ryerson departments have their own e-mail policies. The faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering charges alumni who wish to keep their “ee.ryerson.ca” e-mails up to $160 for four years, but the amount of storage on the accounts is severely limited.

Emma Bristo-O’Connor, a first-year politics and governance student, said she values her account and would like to keep it.

“I’ve used my e-mail for job applications because it makes it look more official,” she said. “You’re not really supposed to use hotmail for job applications.”

Louise Chau, a first-year early childhood education student, disagreed.

“[It] really doesn’t matter to me because I can get a new one at hotmail. No one ever uses my Ryerson account except the teachers.”

Bristo-O’Connor credited her e-mail with scoring her two jobs already, but doesn’t think letting students keep their e-mails after graduation is a good idea.

“It might clog up the system,” she said.