ACU announced in March that student emails would no longer be accessible a year after graduation.

This policy comes from Google changing its licensing structure for educational institutions, including a broad storage policy. ACU administration made this decision in order to optimize the spacing in accordance with the Google storage change.

The new email retention policy will give students a year to move all content to other sources. This helps leave space for current students attending ACU.

Students were taken aback by this abrupt news, expecting that their emails would be available forever as in past years. ACU was one of few universities allowing their alumni to keep access to their emails, making it a difference.

“I was surprised because I had been impressed that ACU had not done that. It was kind of like a one-up of I get to keep my email after graduation,” said Emma Jaax, junior accounting and finance major from San Antonio.”It was a positive difference for students to begin with. I understand the reasoning behind it; one thing ACU is supposed to do is help with post-graduation efforts as far as getting employed and connected with your professional field. It seems like we are discounting a little bit,” 

Students and Alumni started a petition challenging the new policy getting over 1,000 signatures. Some students began brainstorming alternative methods for the retention policy.

Meeyah Davis, sophomore biochemistry major from Teague, proposes an alternative idea to the new policy.

“I was potentially thinking about how we could set up a form for students to fill out if they wanted to keep using their emails, let’s say four years after. I feel like that would be the extent that way you have enough time to move things over and keep it during your transitional years,” Davis said.

Team 55 is available to help any students or alumni establish a personal email and move their content over.