By Madison Miller
Reporter
The process begins today for students to receive more storage for their email accounts.
Pattie Orr, Vice President for Information Technology and Dean of University Libraries, made an appearance at the Student Senate meeting Thursday in the Cashion Academic Center to announce the implementation of doubling email storage for student accounts.
Orr attended the meeting to announce initiatives being taken by Information Technology Systems in order to improve online systems for students.
The first announcement was a reminder students that the online grading system will be officially moving over to Canvas this year. The system that students have used in the past, Blackboard, will officially be terminated in December, said Orr.
“We have been working hard to help the faculty make the transition,” Orr said.
The second announcement regarded the email storage.
“Even though the press says students don’t use emails, I don’t think that’s quite right,” Orr said. “Some of y’all use email, otherwise your email wouldn’t be full.”
Currently, Baylor alumni emails are all rooted in the cloud. Orr is working with Microsoft and others on the ITS task force to make it possible for all emails, specifically students’ emails, to be rooted in the cloud.
In the meantime, Orr said they are raising the storage from 300 megabytes to 600 megabytes. An announcement will be sent to the student body today with details on the switch along with information on the ITS website that gives tips and tricks for students to clear up their mailboxes.
“I think it’s a great idea,” Houston sophomore Natalie Galerne said. “I’m really bad about deleting emails so now I won’t run out of storage so quickly.”
Combine junior, Madison Wood said she is more worried about the AirBear problems.
“I haven’t really had any problems with storage for my email but now I can wait longer to have to purge my old emails,” Wood said. “I would have rather they done something to improve AirBear rather than email storage, though.”
Orr plans to have all student email storage levels to be at 600 MB by the end of the day Monday.
“It will take a little while to propagate this to the entire student body,” Orr said. “It will go through the process and by the end of the day Monday, it will have gone through the whole system. It could be sooner, but it’s hard to say.”
Orr is continuing to work on getting the student emails into the cloud.
“We are not done,” Orr said. “We just want everyone to have a good end of the semester.”
Student Senate erupted into applause after this announcement was made.
The third announcement was in regards to a bill passed previously this semester to provide more WiFi on campus in places that do not already have it.
“We can’t do all the outdoor spaces, so we asked what your priorities were,” Orr said. “Of those, our most important priorities are to start with the Marrs McLean deck and the Vera Daniel Plaza.”
Orr plans for the Marrs McLean Science Building deck to have WiFi before finals.
The last announcement made by Orr concerned the use of Microsoft Office 365 ProPlus system.
“For universities that have paid their license for faculty and staff, Microsoft will provide the system for free for students,” Orr said.
At the meeting, six bills were voted on.
Two bills had to do with whiteboards. One was regarding adding whiteboards to Collins Residence Hall and Penland Residence Hall, which passed unanimously. The other was about changing the chalkboards in Carroll Science Hall to whiteboards and it passed unanimously.
One bill proposed a reduction for International Baccalaureate Diploma Program credits required for Baylor. This bill did not pass with a vote of 13 to 20.
A bill proposing visitation hours to be amended and made the same across freshman residence halls passed unanimously.
Chi Omega presented a bill to help with their new philanthropy event entitled Chi Omega Wish Week Sandblast Volleyball, which passed unanimously.
The last bill was a request for student government to help fund the Latin Dance Society’s Salsa Invasion event. The society requested $4,000 and the bill passed unanimously.
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Correction: This article previously reported that WiFi service would be expanded at the Gov. Bill and Vara Daniel Historic Village. Wireless Internet access will instead be expanded at Vera Daniel Plaza.
