Campus post office shuts down

by Sarah R. Buchholz, Chronicle staff

Michael Piedra, clerk II, posts the new hours of the Campus Sender office in the Lincoln Campus Center. With the closing of the postal substation on May 31, only bus tickets are sold at the site. The Campus Copy print shop also shut down. (Stan Sherer photo)

he Lincoln Campus Center eliminated two services May 31 when it gave up its postal substation, Campus Sender, and closed the Campus Copy print shop.

     Director of Auxiliary Services Ashoke Ganguli said both operations had been losing money and the campus could no longer afford to subsidize them.

     Ganguli said the rental fee the U.S. Post Office paid for the substation didn't cover the salary of even one full-time employee and the Post Office was unwilling to increase its contribution.

     "We said, 'OK, we can't sustain these losses anymore,'" he said.

     Although counter service has been eliminated at the postal substation, Campus Center director of business and facilities Meredith Schmidt noted that students will still be able to purchase stamps from a machine at the former Campus Sender site, as well as at the bookstore and at Fleet Bank ATMs on the first floor. The site will continue to provide Peter Pan bus tickets, as it has in the past, she said.

     Ganguli said Auxiliary Services is considering using the space as a student travel agency and plans to put out a bid request for such a business over the summer.

     "Most campus centers across the country have one," he said.

     Ganguli and Schmidt noted that changes in technology and culture have caused both the postal service and printing operations to be used less frequently. Schmidt said students use the postal service less because of e-mail.

     "The printing business today has dramatically changed in light of personal computers and scanners," Ganguli said. "There was not enough business [anymore] to pay for the machines [in the Print Shop]."

     "A couple of years ago we stopped [offering] the offset printing because people do desktop publishing," Schmidt said, "so we were pretty much a copy center. There are other services like Printing Services in Whitmore, and we were looking at what was being duplicated. We wanted to offer something new and different."

     Ganguli reported that they are looking into bringing a packaging service to one of the vacated spaces to help students who wish to mail larger items.

      "We'll look at what the students need and the community needs and rent that space," he said.

     Schmidt and Ganguli said no jobs were lost in the closings; two staff members moved to other positions and the person who ran the postal substation left several months ago.