No Rain, Sleet or Snow, But Still No Mail

Dozens of students have complained of long delays in mail forwarding this summer, saying their mail is arriving weeks late. Some even say they have gone more than a month without receiving any forwarded mail at all.

But not to worry, says Harvard University Mail Services (HUMS), the office responsible for forwarding student mail over the summer: the checks are in the mail.

Vera Keller '02, who is working in Cambridge over the summer, said that she has not received any forwarded mail since the end of the spring semester.

"It's kind of strange, because I usually get a lot of mail," she said.

Items such as overdue notices for library books and grade reports have yet to arrive at Keller's summer DeWolfe address or her home address in New York.

But HUMS employees say they are not responsible for delays in mail forwarding, blaming the long route student mail travels before reaching a forwarding address.

According to HUMS manager Ursula Moore, mail goes from the original sender to the U.S. post office in Central Square, and is then delivered to the address each student had on campus during the year.

The superintendent's office in each individual House sorts the mail, taking out items for House masters, tutors and others still living in the house.

The remaining mail is then picked up daily and taken to the University's mail forwarding center in Allston, where forwarding address labels are attached, based on summer information provided by students via the HUMS website.

HUMS employee David R. Berry said that all mail is sent back to the Central Square post office for forwarding within 24 hours.

"There's no mail backlog here," said Berry, who is in charge of mail forwarding. "It comes in and goes out."

HUMS employee Chris J. Gengarelli said that students wrongly assume that his office is the only one that handles student mail, causing many to blame HUMS for delays.

"There's a misconception that all the mail comes here," said Gengarelli, who receives complaints on a daily basis.

And he said that students may also overestimate how much mail they should be receiving, making the forwarding service appear slower than it actually is. Junk mail is not forwarded to summer addresses, which greatly reducing the amount of mail a student is sent.

"We recycle more than half the mail that comes in," Gengarelli said.

"Only first class mail is forwarded," he added, referring to items such as letters, bank statements and credit card bills.

While Moore says there is little that they can do to speed up the delivery process, efforts are still being made to help students not receiving their mail.

"We are conscious that there are problems, and we are working to fix them," Moore said. "When someone doesn't get any mail, that's when we investigate."

Students who call or e-mail with complaints have the option of having a tracking test done to see if mail is getting sent, with marked test letters sent through the forwarding system in order to track how long it takes to get to its final destination.

Dearbhla McHenry '00, who worked in the HUMS forwarding office two summers ago, said that a major problem she encountered involved mail from students who failed to provide a summer forwarding address.

McHenry said that mail for such persons was simply sent back and forth between the Houses and the forwarding center all summer.

"Some letters came back with six or seven identical labels on them, only to receive a seventh or eighth," McHenry wrote in an e-mail message.

Gengarelli says such letters are now only being re-labeled once before being returned to the original sender.

"We give it a chance to go through," he said.

Complaints have also been directed to the Houses, which may have been the source of early delays when mail sat in offices unsorted until after Commencement.

"We don't know what else we can do," Berry said. "We are eager to forward mail, but we have to get it first."