The Red and Black

Issue date: 3/29/02 Section: News

Steve Labate, a senior from Alpharetta, checks his ARCHES account Thursday. The University wants all students to have an ARCHES account. (Keri Wiginton • The Red & Black) [Click to enlarge]

Students registering for classes in a few weeks will be reminded that they must register an ARCHES e-mail address with the University by next fall, said Bert DeSimone, communication director for Enterprise Information Technology Services.

"Students will be unable to register for classes without an ARCHES e-mail address beginning next September," he said. "It's a simple process to register and get set up with an account."

University officials announced in October that all students, faculty and staff would be required to register an e-mail address for official communications.

The policy originated from a need to be able to quickly disseminate vital information to the University community, said Tom Jackson, associate vice president for Public Affairs.

"Sept. 11 showed us that we really needed a system to get a message from the (University) president to the entire community," he said. "An official statement was needed, as well as instructions about what to do."

The Executive Management Team, composed of the senior and certain associate vice presidents of the University, decided the best way to implement the policy would be to use ARCHES, the University's proprietary e-mail system, DeSimone said.

For the moment, administrative announcements to students have been only posted on the Student E-Services Web site (http://ses.uga.edu), he said.

Jackson said there hasn't been a major announcement that would prompt the mass e-mailing of the entire University community.

"There won't be any spam involved in this," Jackson said. "We'll only be putting official announcements to faculty, staff and students out."

However, the Office of the Registrar has used registered e-mail addresses to facilitate the electronic class withdrawal system, where e-mail notifications to faculty and students are sent to officially registered e-mail addresses.

Gary Moore, University registrar, said the official e-mail policy has been successful.

"We haven't had any snags with it. Faculty have been notified of withdrawals and assigning grades in a timely manner," he said.

DeSimone said along with the new e-mail policy, there will be new services offered to students, including a personalized Web site and file storage at University servers.

The policy can be viewed at (http://www.emailinfo.uga.edu/archpol.html).

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