Alumni are circulating a petition to send to university administrators calling for the reversal of their recent announcement to alumni that their @colgate.edu email addresses and Google accounts would be terminated at the end of March, reversing a previous policy which gave alumni their Colgate emails for life. Although alumni can request to retain their access to Gmail, this would still result in the domain being transferred from @colgate.edu to @alumni.colgate.edu. The rest of their Google accounts, including Google Drive, will be deleted for all users, as noted in the email notifying alumni of the change on February 15, advising them to start transferring their personal data.
Karl Clauss, Colgate’s vice president of advancement, noted that some of the reasons for account closures are practical and beyond Colgate’s control.
“Google’s decision to end free, unlimited storage for all universities has had a profound impact on Google Drive’s ability to offer a lifetime email account,” Clauss said. “The continued – and increasing yearly – participation of alumni in our use of data would impact Colgate’s ability to provide adequate space for current students and faculty.”
According to Clauss, the majority of alumni accounts are inactive, which means that valuable storage space left over after Google’s policy change is not being used. There are also security risks associated with dormant accounts that the university wants to mitigate, he said.
“If an inactive account’s credentials are stolen, that account could be used to send spam or phishing messages, to access Colgate resources, to download large amounts of data for the purpose of illegally sharing copyrighted content and to spread malware without being easily detected”. said Clauss.
Feeling frustrated with the change, On Tim Tang ’17 alumnus, former senior class president, started the petition via Google Forms to the alumni office circulating among alumni on social media. Tang said his Colgate email address and Google account remained important in his life even years after graduation, and aimed to create a forum for alumni to share their concerns as a collective.
“My Colgate email address is important to me because it’s the email address I’ve used for nine years, feeling like it would be mine and unchanged for the rest of my life,” he said. said Tang. “My goals in starting the petition were to get a sense of how many people are upset about this decision, to create a space for different people to share why their Colgate email accounts are important to them, and to push for greater transparency from Colgate on their decision, a dialogue, and hopefully (with input from alumni) a reconsideration of other possible options.
The petition quickly began circulating on social media and garnered more than 730 signatures as of February 18, according to Tang. The petition, which notes that it was created using Tang’s Colgate Gmail account, has also caught the attention of Colgate students who have yet to graduate, such as senior Olivia Geppel, who s also worry about what change will mean for them after graduation. .
“Personally, I know that many of my accounts on different websites are linked to my current Colgate email,” Geppel said. “Also, having the same email to connect with Colgate alumni for networking purposes is important to me.”
Clauss echoed that alumni who want to keep their email addresses can follow the link in the email sent on Feb. 15. Colgate ITS also provides resources for alumni on how they can transfer information from their Google Drive.