By Chelsie Derman
Editor-in-Chief
Connor Smith, a fall 2018 journalism and professional writing graduate, opened his College email on March 2, only to find that, by April 1, he would be losing his College Google Drive for good.
He proceeded to scramble to save all of his important documents — from every college photo to a bunch of articles and projects. Smith, 25, may now work as a reporter at Barrons, but he still opens his College Google Drive occasionally. By tomorrow, he won’t be able to.
The email Smith received stated that alumni are losing their Google Drive because Google announced new storage limits for Google Workspace for Education. Previously, storage limits had been unlimited, but now this is not the case. The email stated that alumni originally were going to lose their drives a day before, stating, “You were previously notified that the information stored will need to be removed as of yesterday, March 1, 2023. We found that there is still information on your account.”
After triple-checking his email, Smith found no such email.
“I always thought it was nice that TCNJ let you keep your email and Google Drive after graduating,” Smith said. “I totally understand the need to change course if Google is pulling the plug on unlimited storage. I just think communicating plans to delete alumni drives should have been a higher priority. Their message claimed I was notified the drive would be deleted March 1. If that's true, I can't find the email no matter what I search for in my inbox.”
According to IT Support Manager Benjamin Akuma, IT partnered with the Office of Alumni Engagement to update alumni on their Google drives. Alumni Engagement sent out an email to alumni on Dec. 16, 2022 about the March 1 deadline. After this deadline passed, IT found that there wasn’t a “significant traction with a reduction of alumni Google Drive storage usage” so Alumni Engagement sent out another email on March 2.
“The March 1, 2023 deadline was an opportunity to allot alumni with enough time to download or transfer their data,” Akuma said. “The IT plan has always been for April 1, 2023 to be the date that Google Drive access for existing alumni to be removed.”
Akuma explained that, for graduating seniors, once the Office of Records and Registration finalizes a student’s degree conferral process, the student will be moved to alumni status and will receive an automated email stating they have 90 days to save or transfer any files on their Google Drive.
For alumna Isabella Halligan, a May 2022 English secondary education graduate, she had been completely in the dark about losing her drive. She didn’t discover this until she had been asked for an interview with The Signal.
“As far as my TCNJ email goes, now that I am an alumni, I don’t check that email regularly,” Halligan said.
Eliminating alumni’s drives sent both Smith and Halligan in panic.
Immediately after receiving the email, Smith searched his drive to see what he nearly lost. He said most of his drive was “junk.” He had a bunch of “old articles, event videos for clubs, interview transcripts, notes and random class assignments.” He also had his current resume and cover letters on the drive.
Some photos and videos, that weren’t backed up anywhere else, were among the more precious things on his drive. He had hundreds of pictures there.
“A lot of them were for stories and classwork when I was getting into photography,” Smith said. “But many of the pictures were of me and my friends in college. Stuff that didn’t make the cut for Instagram, but was great to go through after a few years.”
Meanwhile, Halligan, 24, who now is an eighth grade ELA teacher at Bridgewater Raritan Middle School, still refers to her drive from “time to time” as a teacher. She studied education at the College and her drive contains both her lesson plans and her practice lesson plans. Her drive also holds resources sent by professors that she wants to save.
Even though Smith understands why they are getting rid of alumni’s drive, he really liked having the drive to look back on.
“It's effectively a searchable digital library of my time at TCNJ,” Smith said. “It's scary to think all that would have disappeared if I missed an email with a one-month deadline.”
Fortunately, Smith said it was easy to transfer the entire drive to a different email address. The student drive had a 15 GB limit, so if alumni want to quickly transfer their documents, they would have to keep this in mind when deciding what to save and what to keep.
Halligan agreed with Smith that the College should have done a better job communicating to alumni how they will lose their drives.
“I believe [the school] even asked us for other forms of contact,” Halligan said. “If there’s people who don’t use [their College emails], they could have sent it to other email addresses on files.”
Although alumni will lose their drives tomorrow, they will still keep their College email addresses.
“That’s a weird decision to make,” Halligan said. “I don’t understand what the difference is concerning the drive versus the email because, even when you make a free account, you get free megabytes. To me, it doesn’t make any sense or why they would decide to get rid of the drive personally.”
Halligan now understands the importance of keeping track of files — especially as a teacher who has a new drive for her teaching role.
“It makes me more on edge about… what files I have where, and I guess just making sure that I have backups of everything,” Halligan said.
Ultimately, Halligan and Smith believe the College should have handled this in a different way. What if Smith, like Halligan, had completely missed the warning email and his Google Drive had just been deleted with important documents?
“I get their calls and their letters in the mail about donations — why not give me a call about this or put a warning in the mail?” Smith said.
After all, how many alumni check their College emails? Smith said he rarely checks his; he is logged into all of his emails in his Google App, but he rarely checks the College inbox. If alumni are already five years out of college, thinking of their College inbox is most likely not high on their mind.
“You throw stuff on the cloud because you think it’s a safer place than an old laptop or cell phone,” Smith said. “This was a bit of a wake-up call.”
