Pitt student organization e-mail addresses change

If student organizations do not like change, they are going to have to learn to deal with it…. If student organizations do not like change, they are going to have to learn to deal with it.

All e-mail addresses provided through the Student Organization Resource Center were altered, possibly complicating the accessibility of student groups.

Addresses will now be preceded by “sorc+.” For example, an e-mail address that previously read groupname@pitt.edu has now been altered to sorc+groupname@pitt.edu.

Student organizations depend heavily on SORC for many things in addition to e-mail addresses. SORC is charged with certifying student groups to officially operate on Pitt’s campus and helps these groups function by providing a number of services, most notably administering budgets.

Certified student organizations can stop by the first floor of the William Pitt Union to check the amount of money in their organization’s bank account or drop off an advertisement flier to have free copies made.

Katy Belski, administrative assistant of the SORC, said the recent e-mail address changes reflect an attempt to centralize the services that Student Affairs has to offer organizations.

Student Volunteer Outreach adviser Terry Milani further explained that the Office of the Vice provost of Student Affairs and interim dean of students determined that for “efficiency, effectiveness and cost control,” computer services for Student Affairs should be centralized on its own server.

Accordingly, all accounts for student organizations, including e-mail addresses and Web pages, had to be transferred from the University system to the new Student Affairs server. This transfer necessitates different names for both organizational e-mail and Web addresses.

According to Belski, these changes are not only to consolidate things administratively, but they also should prove to be convenient for student organizations.

When the organizational accounts were switched over to their own server, Computer Services and Software Design then developed a new system for the accounts. With the new system, presidents, vice presidents and business managers will find a folder marked for their organizations in their personal Pitt e-mail accounts.

An e-mail sent to an organization’s general address will be redirected to these folders in the officers’ personal mailboxes. This way, officers of an organization can read their group’s e-mail with their own Pitt user name without having to worry about a separate mailbox and password for their group.

Access rights are automatically provided through the duration of the officers’ terms. Since SORC requires groups to re-certify once a year or upon the installation of new officers, access to a group’s e-mail account will always be up to date. The new system eliminates the problem of outgoing officers forgetting to hand down their account’s password and also ensures that only current officers have access to the account.

However, while Belski admitted “change is always difficult, especially in the middle of the school year,” she said the alterations were not sudden. Certified student organizations were notified of the upcoming address changes in April in an attempt to ease the transition period, Belski said.

However, Alison Bodenhemier, president of the Campus Women’s Organization, said she is less than thrilled about the situation. She called the changes “just a hassle at this point.”

“They didn’t explain it at all, they just said, ‘Yes your e-mail is going to disappear,’ but they haven’t told us when the changes will go into effect or why they’re happening,” she said.

While Belski said SORC anticipated a negative backlash, most groups seem to have embraced the change more quickly than expected.

“I have to say, I haven’t heard any positive feedback yet, but the complaints haven’t been as bad as I thought they might be,” Belski said.

She also makes clear that SORC is willing to work with groups who express concerns. If an organization finds that, regardless of this early notification, it still encounters a rough changeover between the old and new mailboxes, SORC can keep both e-mail addresses functioning until the group feels settled into the new system.

This thought, however, provides little consolation for some groups.

“All I can say is that I’m not looking forward to it,” Bodenheimer said.