So little space

Guess what year this message is from: "Occasionally, users find the default disk quota of one megabyte inadequate." Is it from 1986? 1990? 1995?

Try 2005. That's the message the computing czars in the School of Arts and Sciences give to students when they log on request an increase in the size of their inboxes.

One megabyte? The administration has sent out school-wide e-mails larger than that.

So the next logical step for any savvy student would be to manually raise this quota -- all the way up to 15 megabytes. That's the limit that the College seems to think is fair.

It's time for a reality check.

The Engineering school recently figured out that students may want to work together on group assignments, trade notes or share project files. What a concept. Due to this, students are afforded 250 megabytes of space.

Wharton and Nursing users are given 50 megabytes, which is at least a little better, but is still overly restrictive.

Schools across the country have gotten with the times and provided adequate space for e-mail (see nearby table). But the College has not changed its quota since 2002.

Even in three years, the technology needs of students has changed. It is silly to continually nag students about their inbox through e-mails from SAS Computing -- sometimes several times a day. Sure, some students could probably be more diligent in deleting mail, but a better compromise could be found.

The only solution is to give students more space. SAS Computing can take solace in knowing that each student is already chipping in hundreds of dollars in "technology fees" to cover the cost of a few larger hard drives.

If Google can give away in excess of 2,600 megabytes of space for free, Penn could at least offer more than 15 for $30,000 worth of tuition.

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