At the start of the academic year, the University implemented sweeping changes to the mail and package delivery system for graduate students. The original graduate package center, located at 160 Comstock Circle, was permanently closed at the start of the year. Students must now send packages to the new Stanford Warehouse in Alameda County, which charges a higher sales tax than Santa Clara County. 

The University also imposed a mandatory $42 mail and package fee on all graduate students. Both changes have drawn the ire of the University’s graduate student community, who complain about increased rates of packages being misdelivered, rejected and stolen.

The Stanford Graduate Workers’ Union views the newly imposed mail fee on graduate students living on campus as a de facto rent increase, according to Chen. Chen said that in the Union’s contract negotiations with Stanford, graduate student workers accepted a lower salary increase in exchange for a guarantee of predictable costs of living. “They basically guaranteed us rent control, which was like a first for any university out there,” said Chen. Chen believes that the mail fee would circumvent this agreement, she said.

“It sets a precedent [where] the university can just add whatever fees onto grad students they want,” said Coram.

Meanwhile, the University claims the new warehouse is a necessary change in response to a growing volume of deliveries. In an email to graduate students, the Mail and Package Services (MPS) and Land, Buildings, and Real Estate (LBRE) said that, by reducing congestion of delivery vehicles on campus, “the new program improves safety for bikers, pedestrians, and buses and gets the university closer to its zero-emission goals.”

Since 2022, the total number of packages the University received per year has grown from 350,000 to 570,000, according to Angie Davis, the University’s Executive Director of Strategic Communications and Media Relations. 

“The new MPS program addresses growing challenges in managing mail and package delivery on campus, such as package theft, misplaced deliveries, and campus traffic,” wrote Davis in an email to The Daily. Davis also said that only two packages were lost in the first few weeks of the school year.

The Union has been representing students’ voices in this matter. During the week of Oct. 13, the Union also held daily “Ghost Box” rallies, carrying painted empty boxes symbolizing lost packages from White Plaza to the President’s office at Building 10. On Oct. 15, the Union submitted a petition to University administration opposing the mail fee and the new package center.

According to third-year Ph.D. student Emily Chen, the Union’s communications secretary, the Union has been in talks with LBRE, Residential and Dining Enterprises (RD&E) and as MPS to address the issues.

Union member Megan Coram, a third-year Ph.D., was present at the meetings with MPS, LBRE and RD&E. According to Coram, the new protocol amplifies existing problems with the Escondido Village Graduate Residences (EVGR)’s package categorization and mapping systems. Since the four buildings are grouped together as one commercial unit, delivery drivers would previously be directed to deposit packages at the package center at 160 Comstock Circle. Since that center was closed, however, items have been misdelivered, Coram said.

Chen also noted that there seemed to be “a lot of miscommunication and lack of preparation prior to rolling out the new warehouse system.” For example, USPS has keys to graduate mailboxes, but private mail carriers do not, leading to some flat mail getting returned to the sender — a complication that the University overlooked, according to Chen.

Fourth-year Ph.D. student Harry Cooperman has experienced some of these problems firsthand — a wedding invitation from a friend took “quite a while to arrive,” he said. Cooperman also said a trading card he ordered online was never delivered, and he had to request a refund from the seller.

Last month, mail-in voters faced challenges receiving and sending out their ballots. 

EVGR-A resident and sixth year Ph.D. student Nicholas Rapidis’s was one such case: his mail-in ballot was sent to him on Oct. 6 but did not arrive before the election. “I vote in Santa Clara County,” he said. “It shouldn’t take more than two days.” He requested a new ballot, which was sent out on Oct. 26, but it, too, did not materialize. Rapidis eventually managed to vote in person, but the process was tedious: “I would rather not have spent two hours [voting] in Palo Alto,” he said.

For Cooperman, the problem was less with receiving his ballot than posting it. He remembers putting his ballot in the mailbox around a week before Nov. 4, but the County told him they had not received it when he called on Election Day. “I spent a good part of the day reaching out to facilities at Stanford and to the county election officials to understand where my ballot was,” Cooperman said. Eventually, he had to submit a provisional ballot in person.

The experience was frustrating, Cooperman said, especially compared to the convenience of voting by mail. “There’s wasted time of figuring out where my ballot was. There’s wasted time figuring out what I’m supposed to do. And then there was the time of driving to the post office, driving to the location, waiting in the line, voting, and then driving back,” he said.

However, MPS maintains that the new system is for the best. “By eliminating hundreds of truck trips to campus weekly, the new program improves safety for bikers, pedestrians, and buses and gets the university closer to its zero-emission goals,” they wrote in an email in October to students.

Coram’s meetings with University staff have given her perspective as to the departments’ juggling act.

“I think MPS is currently doing the best they can under a lot of constraints,” Coram said. “What was fastest and cheapest and most feasible doesn’t match with what’s going to make people the happiest immediately.”