September 8, 2023 | FEATURES | By Brett LeVan
On First Monday of Block 1, the Colorado College mailroom received 950 packages. On Tuesday, they received 1,029.
For the entire month of August, the mailroom received 10,911 packages. By the time First Block rolled around, packages delivered to the CC mailroom had already begun piling up, for during July, the mailroom received 3,485 packages for students, faculty, and staff. The statistics go on.
April Scriven, the Manager of Office Operation Services, has worked at CC for the past five years and was quick to produce information, statistics, and answers to questions regarding the mailroom deliveries, history, changes, challenges, and strategies.
When reflecting on the number of packages delivered to CC last year compared to this year, Scriven said, “packages are going up each year.” For example, in August of 2022, the mailroom received 8,846 packages compared to the 10,911 packages this past August. As the ’22 semester progressed, ordering and deliveries continued to increase, Scriven emphasizes. The CC mailroom received 11,833 packages in October ’22, 10,046 for students and the rest for different academic departments. Scriven predicts those increases to continue.
Around 3,200 students, staff, and faculty use the campus mailroom as their delivery address. The employees who work at the mailroom process each package one at a time, scanning, registering, printing labels, and placing the parcels where they belong “so that we have chain of custody for every single package,” Scriven said. If the package is not labeled with a first name, last name, and box number, it will be kept in the back for students to pick up at the desk. Yet, Scriven says, the lockers are used as much as possible.
This process is the same for all student mail that comes in, but mail for faculty and staff is delivered directly to respective departments. The goal is to have all the packages checked in by the time students get out of class; however, the packages that weren’t processed over the weekend are processed on Monday, which happens to be the busiest day for the mailroom.
Scriven estimates the move-in influx of bulkier packages such as furniture, rugs, and mattress toppers mean there are more United Postal Service and FedEx deliveries right now. However, historically Amazon frequently leads with the most packages delivered during the school year.
“Sometimes we get 500 packages a day from Amazon,” Scriven said. However, this number is certainly just a range and probably much higher since Amazon often partners with third-party carriers such as FedEx, UPS, and Unites States Postal Service to help deliver the 1.6 million Amazon packages mailed each day.
Amazon drivers deliver packages to CC pretty much all day long, Scriven says, while UPS and FedEx drivers typically deliver between eight and 11 in the morning. Notably, the same UPS driver has been delivering to CC for roughly the past 10 years. “He knows us all by name, and we have his cell phone number,” in case there is a snow day or other pressing concerns, Scriven says with a smile,
Every time we hit “Place Your Order” and pick up our packages in the mailroom, let us remember the extensive team of producers, employees, and delivery drivers that make every delivery possible. Not to mention the heavy and complicated environmental footprint that must not be overlooked as a result of these orders.