Editorial | It's about time

Starting this fall, School of Arts and Sciences and Wharton students will no longer suffer from the e-mail woes of yesterday. The University announced yesterday that Webmail will be taken on by Microsoft.

The new system, Penn Live, appears to have everything students were looking for: In addition to e-mail, students can message, host Web sites and blogs, put together a calendar and share documents with fellow students.

But most importantly, a new e-mail provider means no more servers down for undetermined amounts of time, no more bounced back e-mails and no more storage space that is too small to handle the e-mail needs of the average undergraduate.

But while this is certainly a time for celebration among SAS and Wharton students, the University cannot be let off the hook for its poor handling of communication throughout the decision-making process.

Since they first announced that they were switching the Webmail provider, there were multiple missed deadlines. Administrators promised students that a decision would be made, and then let their own deadline come and go.

For students coping with last semester's disastrous crash during finals - along with a host of other Webmail-related snafus - these last few months were frustrating. Even though officials later fixed the problem that caused that crash, the fact that students were left in the dark regarding the University's progress in its negotiations with Google and Microsoft is unacceptable.

We live and learn on an e-mail-based campus, and the University's seeming lack of concern for updating students was disappointing; if technological problems arise in the future, we hope they won't make the same mistake.

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