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 Charles Boone (above) of IUB's Mail Service begins the daily task of sorting campus mail for delivery. Anthony Stratton (below) handles bulk mailings. His equipment allows for a maximum of 9,800 pieces of bulk mail to be processed within an hour. Last week, when the campus' second semester schedule was prepared for distribution, 15,700 pounds of mail were processed in a five-day period. Photos by Heather Hill
 Just the facts...At IU Bloomington Mail Service:
 Kerry Still (right) directs the IUB Mail Service and Mail Service employee Nancy King meters mail for U.S. Postal Service distribution. |
But holidays aside, the Mail Service may be the most taken-for-granted unit on the campus.
If you walked out to pick up the mail from your box at home and found it overflowing with a collection of bills, personal letters and other items, it would take some time to sort it.
Imagine sorting 30,000 pieces of mail every day! That's the average distribution of Bloomington campus mail from the facility on Range Road, just off 10th Street.
The peak month for mail, according to manager Kerry Still, is October. "It comes at a point when school is underway, deep into the semester. Class rosters are set, and at the same time, we actually see departments gearing up for the next semester. You kind of have two semesters colliding," he said.
The campus mail providers also extend a personal touch.
Sometimes, said Still, mail pieces come through the facility with nothing more than a name. "People are in so much of a hurry, they don't complete the address," he said. He pointed to three crates of mail that need some specialized attention from the Mail Service "designated decipherer."
Bob Colson, assistant manager, inherited that role, in part, because he has seniority and a good memory for the names of faculty and staff and where they work. Colson is assisted by Jason Peischl.
"Peischl works at the computer," said Still. "We give him the directories as soon as they are available, and he works on the Internet. He searches several hundred pieces that come in every day. But the number of undeliverable ones can back up, and then Bob (Colson) steps in to help him."
Among the incompletely addressed or indecipherable envelopes are those with no return address. "We're stuck if it has no return address. We either cut the mail piece open or wait until someone calls us. A lot of times, our long-time employees, Colson included, can tell you where that person can be located," said Still.
Out in the main room of the facility, employees--some of them students--sort the mail into pigeonholes with tabs for locations. Other staff members are busily manning postage meters, since 90 percent of the outgoing university mail is metered here. One of the machine operators said that she had posted $3,800 worth on letters in one day.Still other employees are running mass non-first-class mailings through a printer from computer lists. Still said that the use of Fax machines and E-mail has had no appreciable effect on the volume of mail handled by his facility.
"Those two advances have cut into U.S. mail, though," he added.
Outgoing mail gets its share of attention in the large room. There is a courier who makes a trip every day carrying mail to and from the IUPUI campus.
There was a time when communication to and from the Bloomington campus was a lot simpler.
Robert Burton, former secretary to the Trustees of IU, said it is safe to assume that all incoming mail during the university's earliest years was delivered to the president's office.
"In those days, that was the only office in the university that had a telephone," said Burton.
Louise Goodbody, later dean of women, was President William Lowe Bryan's secretary, and it is likely that she opened all of the incoming mail. Bryan's presidency extended from 1902 to 1937.
Through the years, the Mail Service has been nomadic. According to Julie Stines, assistant director of the IU Bureau of Facilities, the mail was handled in the Anthony House in 1964, but the university relinquished the building. Campus Mail's next home was the Nurre House in the Showers Factory complex downtown, but was driven out by a fire to the Showers' storage building, and later to the Barge Bakery building on North Indiana Avenue.
Having settled in the new facility that encompassed several units in 1994, it's not likely that Mail Services will be moving again.
The Bloomington Mail Service operates three other facilities on campus--at Ballantine, Franklin and Bryan halls. The service has 22 employees, including seven drivers and five part-time workers.
For IUB's Mail Service mission, mail routes and guidelines, go to:
http://www.indiana.edu/~mailsvc/guide.htm
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