The campus mailroom, located in the basement of Murray-Herrick Campus Center, will be moving down the hall to combine services with the campus store this summer.

Stephen Griffin, director of the mailroom and campus store, has been developing this idea for two years to increase efficiency and benefit students, faculty and staff.

“My goal has always been since I’ve been here to be the most efficient as possible,” Griffin said.

Operations will remain the same, but package receiving will be located at customer service in the campus store. Remerchandising is the only change set for the campus store.

In response to the online shopping influx, Griffin prioritizes facilitating shipping and receiving while increasing foot traffic in the campus store.

“A lot of our business is moving online, so it’s kind of a nice marriage together that we’ll be able to take our stuff and move it to be shipped out immediately from the (new location),” Griffin said.

The current mailroom will be converted into a storage space until the university re-allocates that space. All the mailboxes will be cleared for good, and letters will be picked up like packages.

“The majority of the students I’ve seen don’t get letters, and if they do, it’s usually junk mail, magazines or something that you didn’t want anyway,” Griffin said.

While letters are going out of style, the mailroom manages 400 to 500 packages a day. In the month of February, the mailroom handled 8,000 packages. At the busy beginning of the semester, it handled 10,000 to 11,000 packages.

With the new set up in the campus store, the mailroom will gain more space for the high volume of packages accumulating on shelves. This will enhance organization and facilitate pickup.

The new mailroom will also introduce an improved system for mailing packages to save students both time and money.

“We’re hoping to have a program that should be evolved next year where we can weigh [the package], you give us your zip code, and we’ll tell you [the cheapest option],” Griffin said.

Griffin also hopes to bring in the community to use campus mail as a post office.

“We can do everything U.S. mail can do. If I can get the community to start spending more money here, then that all benefits the students because all the money made here goes back to save money on tuition,” Griffin said.

The Minneapolis campus will also face similar changes to its campus store and mailroom. The move for both campus mailrooms will begin summer of 2019 and is anticipated to be completed by August 1 in preparation for fall semester.

Tina O’Malley can be reached at omal4989@stthomas.edu.