If the move to Gmail is implemented it would take place before spring 2009 finals, said vice president of student affairs Terry Piper. Mirapoint currently provides student email accounts. It would cost nothing to use Gmail and will give students more space.
‘The university would save $125,000 a year by outsourcing email,’ Piper said. ‘Students currently have a 10 MB limit and with Google it will be 6.5 gigabytes.’
Other schools have already started outsourcing their emails. Students at CSU East Bay, Fullerton and San Marcos have started using Gmail.
Piper pointed out that Gmail is in compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act, the other applications that Google offers like maps and video still have to be reviewed.
However Google stores its email data in worldwide storage locations, Piper said, thus it is subject to the data protection laws of the hosting country.
The login will be the same one students use to access the portal, but the ‘@csun.edu’ will be changed.
‘It would be a good idea because a lot of people have BlackBerrys and you can check your Gmail on it,’ said Sara Imberman with her BlackBerry in hand. ‘You can’t do that with the school’s email.’
The senior Cinema Television and Arts major doesn’t check her CSUN email account very often, but would be more inclined to check it if it was on Gmail, since she already has an account with Google.
‘It’s just really easy to use,’ Imberman said.
Undecided freshman, Diana Torres, said she would trust the Gmail account a lot more than the current Mirapoint.
‘I think Gmail would be better because the one we have messes up a lot,’ Torres said.
A.S. also revisited the elections and changed how the money allocated to elections was distributed.
Because unallocated funds were at $15,000, A.S. President Miguel Segura asked the Senate to reconsider the money that was allocated to A.S. elections. Placing some of it back in unallocated funds.
Last week the senate agreed to give the elections $48,000 a rise from the $3,100 given to the elections last year. The rise comes as the elections committee is attempting a more aggressive approach to engaging students in the elections.
Yesterday’s vote dropped the total to $41,000. Of the total given to elections, $7,000 was going to be allocated if a referendum, raising the G.P.A. requirement for an A.S. senator to 2.3 from 2.0 passed, but that was dropped as well.
Segura wanted to free the $25,000 allocated to the spring elections and put it in the unallocated funds budget, that way should clubs and organizations seek out additional funding, A.S. has the funds to meet their demands.
The $25,000 would be replenished as the money from excess enrollment comes in, Segura said. They expect about 3,000 more students, with each of them paying $75 to A.S., however the number is not final.
‘I do believe we need to give more money to elections and we will,’ Segura said. ‘However (the $25,000) were just going to be sitting there unspent until spring.’
However A.S. director of elections, Mazen Hafez is worried that there may be new senators in the spring that might not agree with replenishing the election funds.
‘I didn’t agree with it,’ Hafez said. ‘I don’t want to have to go back in the spring and ask for it.’
Segura maintained that elections would receive the money back regardless because the issue was already voted on.
‘New senators are not going to have a say in it,’ Segura said. ‘Elections will get their money no matter what.’
