A department moves out of your building, leaving your department to deal with the mail.  Many professors and faculty members leave the University each year. Months, even years, go by and you are still redirecting their mail.  Should your department personnel have to do this forever?

Here are some simple suggestions to assist your mail personnel:

1. Print up labels with the correct address info on them (run off extra sheets on a copy machine). When mail arrives for that department or individual, just apply a label over the address portion of the original address leaving the department or individual's name showing, and put it back in campus mail.
   
   
2. Advise the departments that you will be unable to continue forwarding mail for them. Tell them either mail will be returned to sender now or at some point in the near future, say 3 months. That way, they will have an opportunity to advise everyone sending them items of their correct post office box number.
   
   
3. Use the Junk Mail Program for their mail. Mail will be cancelled saving you the job of doing it (#2 above). Please do not open or write on the pieces of mail. Simply keep a bucket in your office with a sign on it "JUNK MAIL". Whenever you receive something for one of those departments or individuals, or something for your department that you do not want to continue to receive, just throw it in the bucket. When the bucket is full, tape the sign on top of the bucket (north to south and east to west to keep the mail inside). Put the bucket with your outgoing campus mail and our mail carriers will pick it up and return it to the Junk Mail Program. All mail in that bucket will be cancelled for you.

When mail comes in to the central mailroom with a complete address (correct or not), we do not see the mail. It is in sacks and already sorted for us by the U.S. Postal Service. Insufficiently addressed mail is hand sorted by us by address, not by individual's name. When we notice items that are not for a particular address, we do redirect them. Usually, however, we do not look at the addressee as time does not permit for each of the thousands of pieces of improperly addressed mail we receive each day.