Over half a million CSUN alumni will have their student email addresses deactivated on June 30 due to licensing changes from Google, according to a representative from the school’s information technology department. The changes, however, will not apply to students graduating this spring.

Google announced a storage policy update in 2021 limiting the number of accounts, and amount of storage shared by all users, at each school beginning in July.

The contractual changes from Google will not only affect CSUN alumni, but a number of former students from campuses in the California State University system and other universities across the country, according to CSUN’s director of media relations Carmen Chandler.

Alumni reported receiving emails from CSUN in April notifying them that their student accounts were set to be deleted.

“Communications are being sent to those CSUN alumni who still use their my.csun.edu emails to inform them of the change,” Chandler said. “They are encouraged to contact the university’s information technology help desk if they have any questions or need assistance in transferring or deleting any data in their account.”

Student assistant at CSUN’s IT department, Anthony Arakelian, said that alumni — as well as current students — are able to transfer their data from their CSUN emails to their personal accounts. Arakelian said they can also send their data to software storage services, such as Dropbox and OneDrive.

Once the transfer is made, Google will send a link with instructions on what can be transferred and how data can be moved to their other email account. Arakelian said the process is easy and should be done before emails start being deleted.

“After the [June 30] deadline, all the data on that account is going to be deleted,” Arakelian said. “The only thing that is going to remain is the actual email — the name and the numbers — just in case they come back, so they don’t have to get a new email.”

Arakelian claimed that deleting alumni emails is vital to making room for new student accounts.

“If alumni emails weren’t being deactivated that would mean that current or future … students would not be given a student email account because [CSUN] already hit the cap on it,” Arakelian said.

James Corwin, who graduated in 2009 as a cinema and television arts major, has been calling and tweeting CSUN, voicing his discontent on the matter.

Wow @csunorthridge , your IT department is so thoughtful and warm. I expressed my discontent in long form with the way former students are being treated considering the promise of keeping the university email. This is the response. Not proud to be a CSUN alumni. pic.twitter.com/0YURtIdyb3

— James Corwin (@Corwin_James) April 14, 2022

Prior to this updated Google policy, CSUN told students that they could have access to their student emails long after graduating.

“CSUN graduates from the fall of 2009 and onward get to keep their Gmail accounts for life,” reportedly read an email response from IT sent to Corwin back in September of 2017.

When Corwin found out the news that his account was being deleted, he was upset because he believed he would be able to keep his email account forever.

“They’ve known about this for a long time,” Corwin claimed. “They could have chosen a smoother solution than emailing all students 2 months in advance and saying ‘we’re screwing you over now. Good luck.’”

Jesse Gonzaga, who majored in sociology and graduated from CSUN in 2020, also felt frustrated with the decision of email deletions.

Gonzaga said one benefit of having attended CSUN was being able to have a lifelong email account.

“Since entering CSUN as a freshman one of the benefits of attending this campus was that the emails would be available for alumni lifelong,” Gonzaga said. “As a student, we all obviously use the emails [for] more than just school. We all have important files and it’s an easier way to keep in touch with professors after graduation if you do need something.”

The Sundial reached out to Chandler and the IT department for clarification on whether or not those graduating this spring and beyond will eventually have their student emails deleted, and did not receive a response.