The days of unlocking your mailbox in anticipation of a letter from home or a high school crush are over.
In a sign of the times, the traditional mailboxes installed in Smith Campus Center when the building opened in 1999 have been removed due to lack of use.
With the widespread adoption of email in the 1990s followed by texting, smartphones and video calls, students now communicate by almost any method except the U.S. Postal Service.
“Students rarely receive letters anymore, but they receive lots and lots of packages,” says Glenn Gillespie, who leads the mail operation as assistant director of facilities and campus services. “This move is about giving us more space for the packages. That’s our business now.”
The new, larger mailroom is in the Pendleton Building, with the mailing address for students now 150 E. 8th St., Claremont, CA 91711.
About those packages: Pomona receives about 65,000 packages annually, or several dozen per student per year. Email notifications go out when a package arrives. Now, the same applies for letters.
“We’ve had a good 300 to 400 percent increase in the number of packages” over the last 20 years or so, Gillespie says. “In the meantime, the mail has decreased about 75 percent. What we’re trying to do is embrace that it’s a new age.”
As for the lovely old mailboxes, there’s an effort to preserve and repurpose some of them.
“So much nostalgia surrounds the mailboxes,” says Anne Stewart, associate director of advancement communications and events, who claimed about 200 of the 1,920 boxes. “I wanted to be sure we secured some for future use. For now, we will box them up and keep them safe until an opportunity presents itself.”