According to Deirdre Dillon, director of IT training and communications, “Fordham IT looks forward to Gmail Go-Live for our students on October 12.” Fordham IT is confident that the switch will be successful in October.

“At no time did we plan the migration for the first week of September,” Dillon said. She said that at the beginning of the semester, students are “much too busy to add an additional task [including registration, add/drop, new students settling, etc.].”

Evangelos Vekios, FCLC ’11, said, “My initial reaction when I heard that Fordham was switching to Gmail was that there was no way it would happen right away.” Vekios said that he felt that most Fordham projects do not happen within a year.

Vekios said, “I thought this would take five years to happen and I am quite pleased because I didn’t expect this switch to happen so soon, especially in my senior year.” He said, “Gmail is very user friendly and I hope in the future Fordham continues to adopt Google applications because they do wonderful things.”

Several students stressed their concerns about the disadvantages of that transition weekend.

Fatima Bazzi, FCLC ’13, said, “I’m not a fan of Gmail so I’m not really excited about the switch, but I’m afraid that professors will e-mail me assignments during that down time and that I will miss the information.”

Another student, Carl Ballesteros, FCLC ’13, said, “I have been aware of the switch happening and I was full of joy initially, but I thought of how the Fordham mail would sometimes end up placing important e-mails into spam.”

“It made me wonder how everything will transfer over,” Ballesteros said. “I hope that I won’t miss anything when the services won’t be available.”

In response to Ballesteros’ concern, Dillon said, “Please be assured that all faculty will be made aware of the migration to Gmail over the Oct. 9-11 weekend and the time frame that the e-mail system will be unavailable to our students.”

In the Oct. 4 Gmail deployment update, Dillon said, “Email for faculty, staff and students will be unavailable from 7 p.m. on Saturday Oct. 9.” All work is scheduled to be completed by 2 a.m. on Oct. 11 with e-mail back up and running by 5 a.m. on the same day.

Dillon stated in the updated schedule, that this extra time is due to work that “has to be completed by resources outside of our control (e.g., Google, Postini) and they have not been as cooperative and timely as we would have liked them to be in the past.”

To provide further guidance and support to students, Dillon stated in the e-mail, “There will be “Fordham Goes Google” tables set up on the Plaza Level in Lowenstein and in the lobby of the McGinley Center on October 7, 12 and 13 to support you with the change to Gmail and answer any questions you may have.”

Students may wonder how long the system will be down before the conversion is complete, but Dillon said, “Detailed instructions will be available at www.fordham.edu/gmail and in the portal via the ‘Student Tab,’ ‘Fordham Goes Google’ channel.” As stated in the e-mail, Dillon said that the website will include “important, up-to-the-minute information on Gmail deployment in addition to all documentation on moving your account.”