USING our University's WebMail or Mulberry for e-mail services is akin to slipping on concrete on a rainy day: Sometimes, you can walk away without too much damage, but it usually still stings. Last week, Google announced a new program called Apps for Education that offers free e-mail services for college campuses. Upon careful examination of the program's offerings, there is no reason that the University should not take advantage of an incredible bargain that would greatly benefit the University community.
As reported in a Cavalier Daily News article last Friday ("Google offers free e-mail program to colleges," Oct. 13), Apps for Education offers large storage space for users, as well as other services such as Web page-making and instant messaging. The services would cost the University nothing. James Jokl, director of communications at Information Technologies and Communications, said that while the University is aware of these e-mail services, there are no current plans to implement them and that, "We're basically waiting to see what happens."
There are several reasons to implement the program. First, the features would represent a huge improvement over our current services. The University's current quotas of WebMail storage are 512 megabytes for undergraduates, 768 megabytes for graduates and 1024 MB (1 GB) for faculty and staff. Apps for Education offers a full 2 GB of storage for every user, four times the current quota for undergraduate students.
These services extend to alumni as well as current students. Currently, e-mail accounts are terminated for undergraduates, graduates and staff upon graduation or the end of affiliation with the University. By allowing alumni to keep e-mail addresses, closer ties can be kept. This could even aid the University in its Capital Campaign or other fundraising activities as, doubtlessly, stronger ties to the University make alumni donations more likely.
Other benefits include a simpler and more attractive interface. Conveniently, Google also allows labeling messages rather than the use of folders. For example, a message could be labeled as both "Madison House" and "Volunteering" and would come up with the search of either term.
While these benefits are duly noted, what could the potential drawbacks of this service be? Initial concerns might be quelled after reading that we keep our "@virginia.edu" domain name and that the University can continue to manage user accounts with our existing management system (i.e. Netbadge). After verification, the Web page would connect to Google Apps, allowing the University to retain its own security features. Thus, the University could handle all username and password information while still enjoying the benefits of Google's offer.
Finally, a third -- rather desperate -- concern against the program is that Google's e-mail service could be buggy and have errors within it. But Google has been running its GMail service for two and a half years with spectacular results. PC World declared GMail the No. 2 best product of 2005. Google has also consistently run what is widely considered the best search engine on the Internet. Based upon Google's reputation, there is no reason to believe that the features of Apps for Education will be faulty.
The service has already been integrated at other universities, including Arizona State University. All 65,000 of ASU's students have been offered Google's services with over 2,900 accepting the service within the first three days with very few reported technical problems.
In an e-mail, Jokl qualified his earlier remarks by saying, "I did not mean to imply that we had specific concerns or were simply waiting to hear how the current Google project at ASU works out before we do something. It's more that we are aware of thisproject and will be quite interested to hear how it goes, what thestudent experience is, what snags they may hit, etc." He also mentioned other commercial e-mail vendors that are interested in making similar arrangements. While this response may seem adequate now, it leaves matters stagnant. The program is already being implemented throughout the nations and snags, if they were to come, would be occurring. Is there some minimum time that must pass before the service is considered bug-free?
Furthermore, Google's Apps for Education may not be around forever. According to its offer details, "Schools accepted by Google during the Google Apps for Your Domain beta period are eligible for free service for their approved beta users even beyond the end of the beta period, as described in the Terms of Service." If we wait too long, the beta period may end and we may miss out on a terrific service that could help the University for a long time.
Sometimes, the University seems cautious about taking steps that are not in line with other colleges across the nation. With Google's Apps for Education, however, the University has before it an incredible bargain by a reputable name without any risk or burden to it whatsoever. Hopefully, the University realizes this and, perhaps, we'll be the university that Princeton and Harvard follow.
Rajesh Jain is a Cavalier Daily associate editor. He can be reached at rjain@cavalierdaily.com.
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