Departments
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Week of 12 May 1998 |
Vol. I, No. 31 |
Feature
Article
New alumni to get their e-mail @wherever.forever
by Eric McHenry
President Westling delivered two addresses at the Senior Jazz Brunch. One lasted about 20 minutes; the other will last a lifetime.
The University is now providing, as one of its gifts to graduating seniors, e-mail forwarding for life. Each new alumnus can establish a permanent electronic address at the University; it is not an e-mail account, but a forwarding service. The mail it receives will be routed automatically to the graduate's active account.
The class of 1998 is the first beneficiary of this new arrangement, which took effect on Monday, May 5. Members of each successive class will be able to use it upon their graduation, and the University hopes ultimately to make the service available to all alumni.
"This permanent e-mail forwarding address will help you stay in touch with friends and with the University, wherever life may take you," said Westling to enthusiastic applause at the May 1 brunch. "I'm told that in about half an hour each of you will receive an e-mail message providing you with a URL, which will bring you to a Web page, which will give you instructions on how to activate this e-mail forwarding address.
"A senior class has woven into it connections that will last a lifetime," he said. "Soon you will leave this place and scatter to the four winds, and some of those connections that you have made here will fade for a while. But they will grow again in the years to come. With this e-mail forwarding system, we hope we have provided a way for you to hold on to some of what's best. I hope you'll use the account to maintain those important connections with your classmates and with those of us who look forward affectionately and proudly to what we will hear from you as the future unveils itself."
Each address is created from a fairly simple template: the person's first name, last name, and year of graduation. An alumnus named John Doe from the class of 1998 would have as his address <john.doe.1998@alum.bu.edu>. This formula will permit various permutations -- to accommodate legal name changes, for example, or nicknames by which alumni are more familiarly known. As of this fall, graduates will also have the option of using an e-mail alias.
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At the May 1 Senior Brunch,
Jon Westling announced that graduating seniors
would now receive e-mail forwarding for life. The
University hopes ultimately to make the service
available to all alumni. Photo by Kalman Zabarsky
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Those are likely to include an online alumni directory and electronic mailing lists with class-specific news, sports information, and other resources from the University. Access to the directory, which is still in the planning stages, will be restricted to alumni. According to James Stone, director of consulting services at the Office of Information Technology, each graduate will be able to enter the system only by "authenticating" -- using his or her designated log-in name and password. Updating one's entry, he added, will not require mailed forms or even phone calls. Using the Web, graduates can specify the new e-mail address where they want correspondence forwarded.
"This has many, many benefits," said Stone. "How good would it be for you if you had one phone number your entire life, one street address, and every time you moved -- which you will do -- you did not have to tell anybody anything?"