The weather is getting colder, but the Dickinson College Mailroom is heating up as the holiday season fast approaches.

According to Zair Ulsh, Dickinson College’s supervisor of package pick-up in student mailroom, the holiday season is the busiest time of the year for the mailroom, specifically due to package deliveries. There has been an “influx of mail coming from Cyber Monday and Black Friday” in the past week, Ulsh said. He said that from Dec. 2-3 they had 410 packages come in via UPS, “and that’s not including FedEx or USPS.”

Ulsh credits modern technology for the increase in packages around this time the past few years. It is “so much easier now to go online” and buy items, as opposed to going to “the brick and mortar stores,” he said.

For many colleges around the nation, this time of year causes a lot of problems in their mailrooms due to inadequate space and resources, according to an article by Kate Stoltzfus, published in the Chronicle of Higher Education, titled “Thanks, Amazon. Campus Mailrooms Struggle to Keep Up With Boom in Packages for Students.” Ulsh is thankful that the same cannot be said for Dickinson College.

Dickinson College’s partnership with the Mid-Atlantic Region Colleges and Universities Mail Services (MARCUM), has allowed Ulsh and his staff the ability to visit other college’s mailrooms.

“We find that [these colleges] have much smaller spaces to deal with than we have,” Ulsh said. “[The] college has really helped us…space-wise.”

Ulsh said the school’s mailroom is also partnered with the Harrisburg Capital Area of Postal Customer Council (HCAPCC), which meets “once a month in Harrisburg at the post office…to discuss postal issues and concerns.” Ulsh said that the council is a great “networking tool,” and that it “really helps” keep the campus mailroom operating smoothly.

In addition, Ulsh credits an idea suggested by Idea Fund to become more sustainable for helping to keep packages from getting backed up. According to Ulsh, the process “used to be the pink slips in the Hub boxes,” but with the help of Idea Fund when a package arrives now “for students’ to pick up they receive an email.” Ulsh said the transfer of packages into student’s hands is now “much quicker.”

Many student employees in the mailroom organize and distribute packages to fellow classmates as well. Ulsh said that “students [employees] are pretty responsive” to emails that are “fired out” when the mailroom needs extra hands during the holiday season.

In order to ensure that students receive their packages before leaving campus, Ulsh urges students to order their mail at the latest by the beginning of next week. Ulsh said that a student’s package “should get here in a few days,” and once received will be a “same-day service” process.

Ulsh said that any packages that the mailroom receives after the last day of classes would not be forwarded to students’ home addresses.

“We will hold the packages here until the students return,” Ulsh said.

Package Pick-up is open Monday-Friday 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., and Saturday’s 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., according to the Dickinson College website. If you have any interest in working in the mailroom or need any information you can call: 717-245-1973.