Last Thursday, two student employees of the Barnes and Noble
Bookstore found a number of personal mail items addressed to
students, in the dumpster behind the Busch Student Center.

According to sophomore Michael Heithaus, one of those who found
the items, there were “close to 75 pieces of mail” in the trash
receptacle. He said some of the items were personally addressed
generic advertisements, like credit card offers, but others were
pieces of personal mail–including bank statements, sizable checks
and even a postcard from Paris.

After the students notified the Department of Public Safety,
INDOX Services and Assistant Vice President of Student Development
Phil Lyons, INDOX’s mail and copy center supervisor, Mike Poole,
inventoried the trash receptacle and retrieved the remaining
items.

“I was sick to death,” said INDOX Operations Manager Lisa
Grossenheider, “and we physically put Mike into that Dumpster to
get every piece of [mail], so I feel we got it out.”

She estimated the number of personal, addressed, non-generic
mail pieces at 20 to 25.

Lyons said that he had yet to determine who actually threw the
mail away but said that he had not eliminated the University’s
student employees working in the mailroom, INDOX employees or U.S.
Postal Service workers as suspects. He said the school could find
the culprit by reviewing surveillance videos.

Where the immediate problem of the trashed mail has been
amended, the incident has highlighted a nebulous relationship that
SLU now hopes to clarify.

According to Grossenheider, the workers in the mailroom are all
students employed by the University and are ultimately the ones
responsible for mail delivery.

Poole acts as their supervisor but does not directly coordinate
their activities. He also has responsibilities with INDOX’s copy
services.

No SLU employee, in fact, oversees the mailroom workers,
according to both Grossenheider and Lyons.

“We’re reviewing that relationship,” said Lyons, who will be
meeting with Grossenheider this afternoon. “The students are
employees of the University but are not supervised by the
University and that relationship has got to change.”

INDOX, nonetheless, feels responsible for the student mail
services.

“We’re here to help provide a service,” Grossenheider said. “I
feel terrible about [the incident] because it’s my responsibility
… no one has told me that … but I want this to be handled in
the most professional way–and I feel that’s very, very
important.”

She said INDOX cannot afford to employee a permanent mailroom
supervisor but recognizes that one is needed and plans to suggest
that the University hire one.

“I think it’s a problem if we’re paying students to put mail in
the mailboxes but someone’s supervising [them who’s] not an
employee of the institution,” Lyons said.

Neither INDOX nor Student Development was able to produce,
before deadline, any written statements or contracts stipulating
INDOX’s mail-service obligations.

Grossenheider explained that it was INDOX’s policy to place
generic mail addressed to students, which she called “bulk mail,”
into student mailboxes after first class mail was placed, but it
was never policy to dispose of the mail entirely.

If mail is addressed only to “current resident,” she said, INDOX
places on a table in its office.

Generic mail usually arrives at INDOX in separate bins from
personal mail, but it is not uncommon for personal mail to be in
those bulk bins. Grossenheider said the personal mail that the
students found in the Dumpster had most likely mixed with the
generic credit card advertisements.