Time for a Change@fas

It turns out the lowest approval ratings in Cambridge don’t belong to George W. Bush. Instead, that honor goes to the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) e-mail client, Webmail. In a recent survey, only two percent of undergraduates stated that they were very satisfied with Webmail, compared with 23 percent who reported being very dissatisfied.

This widespread discontent has triggered a mass exodus from the Webmail interface to other clients, in particular Google’s free and convenient service, Gmail. In 2008, 58 percent of Harvard undergraduates used Gmail as their primary email client, up from 38 percent the year before.

It’s no surprise that so many students are jumping ship to get on board the Google bandwagon. Webmail is plagued with problems, notably its poor interface, lack of adequate spam filters, limited user names, and miniscule storage capacity of 40 megabytes.

FAS Information Technology claims to be working to respond to these student concerns, but change has been slow in coming. While various improvements have supposedly been considered, concrete plans for reform are yet to emerge.

Meanwhile, the Graduate School of Design (GSD) has embraced a proactive solution, outsourcing their e-mail needs to Google. Since last fall, the GSD has assigned all students a “gsd.harvard.edu” account that operates using a Gmail interface.

Harvard College should consider a similar solution. The main changes that need to be made to Webmail’s antiquated system could easily be accomplished by outsourcing to a provider, like Gmail, who already provides the majority of Harvard students with the e-mail tools they desire.

FAS IT articulates various concerns with outsourcing, worrying about a loss of privacy and reliability. These fears seem overblown. If Gmail, or another provider, were used on a trial basis with a responsible privacy agreement, there does not seem to be a concrete reason to fear decreased autonomy or information leaks.

Many other educational institutions have successfully turned to outside providers like Google and Microsoft for their e-mail needs. The biggest roadblock to Harvard following suit seems to be closed-minded thinking. This is unacceptable when so many readily available solutions exist to the problems that plague our outdated system.