Mailing the Mail Room: Oklahoma Christian’s plan to relocate the Mail Center 

At any given time, the mail center at Heritage Village is humming with students receiving Amazon orders, letters from loved ones, dreaded taxes and other packages and envelopes. However, Heritage Village will soon lose this bustling, as the school is currently in the process of relocating the mail center. 

About a year ago, the decision was made to move the mail center to the old cafeteria space. As it currently stands, the space is littered with dust, broken tiles and half-smashed walls. Potentially by spring of next year, the brand-new mail center will be open for business. 

Chief Information and Campus Operations officer, John Hermes, explained how there have already been some setbacks in the project.

“It was supposed to be done before students returned (for the fall). We had some air conditioning and heating issues that we had to redesign,” Hermes said. “We’re hopeful that it will be mostly complete by fall break. But I’m skeptical.” 

The overarching theory for the purpose of the move is the distance and inconvenience the current mail room has to students. Teresa Tarrant, the mailroom manager, revealed the most common complaint in mailroom surveys was how far away the center sat from the rest of campus. 

However, Hermes offered another concrete purpose for the move.

“The driver (for the project) is the counseling center needs to expand its office space and operations,” Hermes said. 

Generous donations and initiatives have allowed the counseling center to expand: unfortunately, right into the current mail room. To make way for an expanded counseling center, the mail room needs a new home. 

Furthermore, Hermes notes this move will ease the job of students and administrators who work in the mailroom. 

“Because students get more and more volumes of packages … This will provide them some better space for all those packages that come in on a daily basis,” Hermes said. 

Overall, this move seems much anticipated by faculty and students who have found the current mailroom cumbersome. The more centralized location will benefit students in the resident halls and apartments; the better package system will benefit faculty and student workers; and the counseling center expansion will allow for greater space to serve students.