Problematic Packages

Few administrative e-mails delight students like package notification e-mails. Sometimes the notice means a surprise gift, sometimes it’s a shipment of textbooks and sometimes the package simply contains all the belongings that wouldn’t fit on the plane. But whatever the case, an inbox with a package notification e-mail almost always brings a smile to a student’s face. In the past few weeks, however, all too many of these important e-mails went unsent, and as a result students’ packages idled away in increasingly infamous package depots. While the buzz of parcel activity related to the start of school makes the depots a necessity to prevent the bombardment of boxes on House superintendents, the current implementation of the system is absurd.

Package delivery is most important during the first few weeks back in Cambridge. When students save money by ordering textbooks online, the anxious student loses out on his or her chance to actually stay on top of the reading for a week or two. And that precious thing forgotten at home—perhaps a shirt you wanted to wear on Saturday night, the printer you didn’t trust in storage or the finishing touch on your room decorations—might not be critical, but still essential to getting the beginning of the term in order and underway. And for the particularly homesick student, that care package—especially if it contains perishable items, such as cookies—must make its way to him or her as soon as possible. But poor communication from the new depots this year prevented countless students from knowing they had a package waiting until several days late—if at all.

Since House superintendents must be notified before they can notify students, many students don’t receive the message until at least the next day, or frustratingly, sometimes minutes after the depot has closed for the day. More disconcerting still, numerous undergraduates have reported recently that they were never notified at all of their package’s arrival, having to rely instead on observant friends or investigative initiative to learn that their package is waiting. The influx of parcels in the fall is certainly responsible for some of the disorganization—and some packages will inevitably fall through the cracks in even the best designed system—but it would likely take a student business less than an hour to devise a more efficient system to notify House supers and connect students with their packages sooner. Indeed, although not clear-cut, the root of the problem seems to be the decision to outsource the management of these depots once the academic year began.

To be sure, the package depot problems are no cause for outrage and consternation. At its worst, the depots have proven to be a frustrating inconvenience. Some students might grumble about taking the slightly longer walk to the depot rather than their House office, but most understand the reasoning behind it. What is unsettling is that such a simple objective—centralizing package delivery at the start of the term—was so easily undermined along the way by bureaucratic decision-making. The depots were established to make everyone’s lives a little easier, not the other way around.

Students can rest comfortably with the return of package delivery to their respective Houses this month—and along with it, a system of notification decently reliable. But before the package depots return next fall, an assessment of how the depots are run is most definitely in order. With a full year to get the kinks out, improvements should not be difficult. But then again, the problem is fairly inexplicable in the first place.