The incoming freshmen enrolled at Boston College will not receive the same email services as the older students did. The officials of the college have decided to stop giving out new email accounts to all incoming students.
Incorporating email addresses to existing accounts
Instead of providing new email accounts with logins and inboxes, the officials at Boston College will only provide the incoming freshmen class of 2009 with a new email address. The new email address, which is in the namesurname@bc.edu format, will be incorporated with the students’ pre-existing email accounts. The college-issued emails, therefore, will be directly forwarded to the personal email accounts that the students specified in their college application forms. So, whether they are using Gmail or Yahoo! Mail or any other email service, the incoming freshmen students of Boston College can expect all their school-related emails in their own inboxes.
Establishing digital identities before entering college
The reason for the college officials’ decision to stop giving out new email accounts to incoming freshmen is the fact that many students have already established their own digital identities before enrolling for college. Many students today, after all, have been email experts since their elementary days. What’s the point in providing them with yet another email account to manage? Besides, it’s not like the students are actually using their Boston College email account for anything other than reading email alerts from the school.
According to Mary Corcoran, the associate vice president for user and support services at Boston College, students also have the tendency to use their Boston College email accounts only because they are required to. “Students weren’t really using the Boston College accounts as much as we would like them to,” she said.