Departments across campus will soon have to pick up their mail from a central box in their building instead of having it delivered to their individual office mailboxes.

Campus mail services is switching its delivery method to a central mailing system in order to compensate for a limited number of employees.

John Sigler, the associate director of support services, said one of the mailroom’s employees quit about two years ago, and because the university decided not to fill that position, the staff went down from five to four.

Now, whenever one worker takes a sick day, the staff is even more pressed for time, and the office’s part-time worker has to take over a mail route.

Faced with $8 million in budget cuts and declining enrollment, one of Eastern’s financial strategies has been attrition, which means positions around the university are not always filled when they become vacant.

When Clay Hopkins, the director of telecommunications, retired last year, his position was not filled, so Facilities Planning and Management was given authority over mail services as of April 1.

Sigil said the mail services crew already had the drawings ready and new boxes picked out by the time he took over.

“That was sort of the accommodation (the administration) made for the mailroom since they were taking a position away from us,” he said.

He said Old Main has had this type of system already for 15 to 20 years, during which time the president’s office, vice presidents’ offices and math department have all picked up and dropped off their mail in a central location on the first floor.

Central boxes are now installed in Blair Hall, Buzzard Hall, Ninth Street Hall, Klehm Hall, Lumpkin Hall, Coleman Hall, McAfee Gym, Lantz Arena, the Doudna Fine Arts Center, the Student Services Building, the Human Services Building, the Physical Sciences Building and the Martin Luther King Jr. University Union.

Mail services spent about $30,000 on the installation, which it paid for out of a fund it has to update its equipment according to new state and federal regulations, Sigil said.

“It’s not a dollar savings; it’s a time savings,” he said. “When you lose a person, at that time you’re not talking about dollars—you’re talking about labor; you’re talking about amount of hours that you can actually save.”

While Sigil said people in Old Main never mentioned any problems, others are beginning to foresee issues.

Sarah Miller, the office manager of the English department, said the department receives a lot of sample textbooks and manuscripts along with regular mail for its 45 faculty members.

She said she predicts some days when someone will have to bring a cart downstairs to get the mail; however, she said it would not be as problematic as having to make multiple trips because of not knowing when the mail has arrived.

Miller said the biggest concern people in the building are having is the box is located on the opposite corner to the elevator.

Jean Toothman, an office administrator, agreed with Miller.

“It’s going to be inconvenient, especially because of the location,” she said.

Sigil said the crew reached out to all departments and met with individuals who wanted to talk; however they also had to follow certain guidelines when installing the boxes.

For example, the location the English department requested would not have worked because a bulletin board and soda machine are already in that location, so Sigil said they would have to take the issue up with Blair Lord, the vice president for academic affairs.

When mail services implements the new system, all mail will be delivered to the central boxes, though carriers will bring mail up to individual departments if the box is full, and they will pick up the mail as well if departments leave slips in the box saying they have too much mail to carry down.

Sigil said mail services is currently working with a company to fix issues with some of the locks and keys to the boxes, and once those are resolved, he will announce the date of implementation.

“We’d like to get it done as soon as possible, but we also want the mailboxes to operate properly,” he said.

Stephanie Markham can be reached at 581-2812 or [email protected].