Dead letters: At one point or another modern humans must face
this bureaucratic reality. “On errands of life, [they] speed to
death,” as Melville wrote.

Some mail pieces are simply undeliverable.

Metaphysics aside, the dead letter issue is at the heart of a
Student Development investigation into how, two weeks ago,
deliverable mail–first class items addressed to students and
on-campus businesses–landed in a Busch Student Center trash
receptacle.

Using video surveillance tapes, Assistant Vice President of
Student Development Phil Lyons has determined that a University
employee working in the mailroom actually discarded the mail
pieces. Yet the action, he said, was motivated by INDOX Services’
practice of throwing away dead letters.

It seems the student employee, whom Lyons said need not be
identified, simply threw out the wrong bin of mail.

“Was it malicious? No. It was genuinely a mistake,” Lyons said,
adding, “He was following instructions he understood to be
correct.”

INDOX, whose job, according to Lyons, includes supervising the
University-staffed mailroom, frequently receives mail addressed
either to campus locations that no longer receive mail, like
residence halls, or sent simply to the BSC–without a name or box
number.

According to INDOX’s Operations Manager Lisa Grossenheider, the
post office will take back first class mail that needs to be
forwarded.

Jim Hall, supervisor for the Carrier Square Post Office, which
serves SLU, said his office will forward mail if the recipient has
provided the U.S. Postal Service with a new address.

If not, he said, “we’ll kill it”–meaning return it to its
sender.

Mail the post office refuses to take back is left to INDOX to
forward. If students have provided the University with a permanent
address or forwarding address, a mailroom employee personally
forwards the mail piece. If not, it’s dead.

Lyons sat in his office on the second floor of the BSC yesterday
and produced a stack of mail pieces–from personally-addressed,
generic credit card solicitations to a glossy magazine sent simply
to 20 North Grand Blvd.

“How do you deliver that?” he asked. “They get tons of stuff
just like this.”

There is also the issue of copies of the Wall Street Journal
appearing at INDOX by the dozen every day: They are stuffed into
mailboxes and are, for the most part, not removed by the recipient
by the time the next day’s paper must be delivered to the same
box.

Grossenheider said the number of WSJs sitting around in the
mailroom could fill half of her office.

“In beginning this process a week ago my question was, ‘Why is
mail thrown away at all?'” Lyons said, adding he now understands
the reason. “If the post office won’t forward that piece … there
really is no other option.”

Grossenheider said INDOX now has a policy of delivering all
generic mail that is personally addressed, which until last week,
it would place on a table in its office.

She said she is also worried both about dead letters that the
mailroom workers throw away and delivered mail that students
discard around the mailboxes in the BSC.

“The students need to be aware,” she said, brandishing one
letter she found near the mailboxes that contained an individual’s
name and social security number.

“Maybe they need to tear up these junk pieces if they don’t want
[them].” She also said she may implement a shredder in the mailroom
to destroy undeliverable mail.

To ensure that a mistake like the one made two weeks ago never
occurs again, mailroom workers now place all dead letters in a
special bin, the contents of which are double checked by INDOX
before they are thrown away.

Lyons said he is considering a third check conducted by a
University supervisor.

“Besides INDOX, we need to be monitoring what goes in the
trash,” he said. “Ultimately, the University could be responsible
because [mailroom workers are] our employees. It makes sense that
the University has some connection to those workers and what
they’re doing.”