Say goodbye to CubMail. After a year of negotiations, Columbia will be moving to a Google-based email client by the end of this year, Dean of Student Affairs Kevin Shollenberger told Spectator on Friday.
Columbia University Information Technology will roll out the Gmail-like interface in phases. First, 50 to 80 students—some of whom already forward Columbia emails to their personal accounts, and some of whom don’t—will be selected for this trial run by Shollenberger, Columbia College Student Council President Aki Terasaki, CC ’12, Engineering Student Council President Nate Levick, SEAS ’12, GS Dean Scott Halvorson, and GS student government leaders.
Later, 1,000 students chosen by lottery will make the transition, and by the end of 2012, every undergraduate in Columbia College, the School of Engineering and Applied Science, and the School of General Studies will have a Google-based email account.
All students starting at Columbia this fall will be signed up for the Google email accounts.
Terasaki said it was “fantastic” that the University was able to make the switch despite logistical concerns, noting that University Senators Alex Frouman, CC ’12, and Kenny Durell, CC ’12, helped push to make it happen.
“I’m glad that it’s finally here,” Terasaki said. “I’m really excited that our senators were able to lead the way on this and take this charge up for the students.”
Melissa Metz, the director of UNIX, email, and databases at CUIT, said that the decision to move away from CubMail reflects the number of students who have already stopped using it. According to Metz, 30 percent of students already forward emails from CubMail to their personal accounts, and of those students, about 90 percent forward to Gmail.
The phased rollout is intended to help CUIT recognize and troubleshoot any problems with the new system before they expand it to the entire undergraduate student body. Frouman stressed that he hopes that Columbia’s ultimate goal is to expand the new email system to the entire University, including graduate schools, though Eleanor Templeton, the director of communications for Student and Administrative Services, said that that idea is still being evaluated.
“We want everybody to have it as soon as they can,” Frouman said.
Barnard transitioned from Barnard College Webmail to a Google-based system in Fall 2010. A survey conducted by Barnard College Information Technology in October 2011 showed positive feedback from students.
Metz said CUIT is still working with faculty members and graduate schools to determine “whether the new system was right for them.”
CubMail was first introduced in 2006, and students have criticized its outdated look for years. Frouman said that when he raised the issue of changing CubMail in the senate in the fall of 2009, he was surprised that CUIT representatives had no idea it was a widespread student concern.
Last January, Columbia, along with 28 other universities—including Harvard, Princeton, and Stanford—began contract negotiations with Google in a consortium called the Common Solutions Group.
Not all schools in the consortium chose to adopt Google-based email. But even though Columbia ultimately did, its negotiations were stalled by concerns about whether or not Google Documents complies with the Americans with Disabilities Act. Columbia determined that Google Docs is not ADA-compliant because it is not compatible with some screen readers for the visually impaired, and as a result, Google Docs will not be part of student email accounts.
Terasaki said Gmail is a “better system” than CubMail, offering features like Google Calendar that can be helpful for classes. The new University accounts will remain separate from students’ personal Gmail accounts, according to Durell, a member of the USenate’s Information and Communications Technology Committee.
Levick said he was looking forward to seeing how Gmail and Google Calendar would integrate with classes.
If faculty start using the new system, for instance, they could schedule tests and other class events and share them with their students. Students will also be able to share calendar events with each other, and every University Network ID will automatically be added to each user’s contacts.
“I think it’s an almost universally good move,” Levick said. “I think everyone’s excited.”
Levick said that to choose students for the initial test run, he will reach out to student representatives, “people across disciplines in engineering, as well as people I know who are tech-savvy, and people who still use classic CubMail.”
Frouman acknowledged potential privacy concerns about the switch to Google, especially in light of the new privacy policy Google unveiled last week. The policy has come under fire, with some experts saying it allows Google to collect too much information about users’ activities.
Metz, though, said that “privacy will not be an issue,” as the new system will operate under the terms of a Columbia-approved contract, not Google’s new privacy contract.
Templeton said that in the long-term, the cost of the new system is “pretty minimal.” The University’s main expenses will come from consulting with an information technology firm about the transition.
An earlier version of this story omitted mentioning that GS administrators and student leaders would aid in the selection process of students for the first phase. An earlier version also inaccurately implied that it was the goal of the University to expand a Google-based system to all graduate schools. Spectator regrets the errors.
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