Students will no longer have to worry about storage for e-mail accounts when Mississippi State University student e-mail accounts will convert to a new system named BullyMail.
The system will be hosted by Google and has 7.5 GB of storage space, compared to the 20 MB of the previous system.
Rhett Hobart, Vice President of the Student Association, pushed for the change in student e-mail after receiving complaints from instructors about the lack of space in student’s inboxes. With the previous e-mail system, once the number of messages exceeded about two hundred, the system would reject any new messages.
Carina Lewis, a graduate student majoring in English, found the previous e-mail system to be ineffective.
“I found that my mailbox would fill up quickly,” she said. “I would e-mail articles to myself and I guess there just wasn’t enough space to hold everything that I needed.”
BullyMail is compatible with any cell phone that uses Gmail, including the Android, BlackBerry, iPhone and Nokia S60. To download the appropriate app, visit google.com/mobile/mail/. iPhone users can browse several Gmail applications from iTunes by searching “Gmail” in the iTunes store.
BullyMail comes with an address book, a calendar and “Google Docs,” which helps students manage and create presentations (similar to Microsoft’s PowerPoint program), documents and spreadsheets. Media created in the program can be shared with others.
Hobart said Google Docs will be a great benefit for students working on group projects.
Google’s e-mail services are free for educational institutions. Google also hosts the system on its own server, freeing space on the university’s website.
Other universities to use Gmail include Mississippi College, Southern Mississippi, Jackson State, Arizona State, Utah State, Vanderbilt, Clemson, LSU, George Washington and Northwestern.
“We feel it’s a great transition,” Hobart said. “It’s going to be a great benefit to students … and for increasing enrollment.”
The University of California at Davis decided not to use Google’s e-mail system for faculty and staff, citing privacy risks as a factor.
The university continues to use Gmail for students, because they have “less access to university assets and research, compared to faculty and staff,” according to UC Davis’s information and education technology website.
MSU faculty and staff are not eligible for BullyMail, according to Mike Rackley, head of the Information Technology Services department.
On March 3, the Student Association passed Resolution 17, granting it permission to switch over to Gmail. During the summer, SA worked in conjunction with ITS to develop the system.
“We’ve been glad to work with the Student Association in implementing this system,” said Rackley. “They’ve been quite helpful.”
For more information on changing incoming and outgoing IMAP or accessing BullyMail from a cellphone, contact ITS at 325-0631.