CU Makes Way for New E-mail System

Say goodbye to CULink.

Over the years students have grown accustomed to checking grades, mail and homework assignments all through CULink. The University of Colorado Student Union has been searching for a new, better carrier to replace the former. After several months of research, UCSU said they have found such a provider.

Jon Giltner, director of ITS Administration, helped narrow the choices down to Google Apps and Microsoft Live@EDU. The final choice was left up to CU students.

A survey was sent to the student body Feb. 11 concerning the new e-mail system. More than 1,000 students replied within a week, helping to decide which service was more appropriate for CU. The beginning of the survey contained a broad list of features and listed whether “Service A” (Google Apps) or “Service B” (Microsoft Live@EDU) contained them. Almost 69 percent preferred “Service B.”

The next part of the survey had students rank features from one to five, in terms of how often they used each. The top three ranked features were housed by Microsoft, which include an online harddrive, service used after graduating and integration with Microsoft Office.

In the last section of the survey, students were, once again, asked to rank features in order of importance and usefulness. Once again, Microsoft took the top two features: on-line storage of any document and directory lookup.

The system cost of CULink is built into tuition, costing about $36 per student a year. When the switch to a new provider is made, UCSU will confer on whether to reduce tuition or reallocate the extra funds.

Daniel Oxenhandler, director of communications of UCSU, said this change is for the better. With the new provider Oxenhandler said he hopes to cut student costs.

“Microsoft is the widest range of services for the lowest price — it’s basically free . . . Our main goal is to reduce those fees,” Oxenhandler said.

Student focus is on the privacy of Microsoft Live. Sean Rooks, a sophomore economics major, is concerned about the new system perks.

“I’m worried about privacy,” Rooks said. “Will Microsoft be able to look at my content? And will they place tons of ads? Nothing is free and this sounds too good to be true.”

Oxenhandler said Microsoft will house the email but the ITS department still handles the entire content along with spam filtering.

“In my opinion, their decision was well thought out and I think this is a good example of the students and university administration working together to best meet the needs of the campus,” Giltner said.

Article by CU Independent
Staff Writer Adrian Kun.
http://www.cuindependent.com/