After just three years of using the Microsoft Exchange e-mail service, Villanova students will welcome the transition to Gmail. The advantages of Gmail over the current platform are no secret to Villanova students. Many students already maintain their personal e-mail accounts on Gmail, and many set their student e-mails to automatically forward mail to the Gmail server.

The Gmail transition has many obvious benefits for students. Gmail accounts have a virtually unlimited storage capacity. Additionally, Gmail will allow students to keep our accounts indefinitely after graduation, instead of maintaining the current practice of gradually phasing them out.

Almost all of the credit for the recent upgrades goes to UNIT, even though UNIT seems only an object of attention when something goes wrong. Whether our laptops break, the wireless goes down in the Quad or the printers malfunction in the library, UNIT gets more than its share of the blame when technological disaster strikes. But UNIT gets none of the credit when something goes right.

The transition to Gmail will greatly enhance the productivity of Villanova students and will make all of our lives easier in many ways, but it should also serve as a reminder that UNIT is responsible for a lot more on this campus than wireless outages.

The majority of faculty members and administrators across Villanova is always ready to answer our inquiries, schedule a last-minute interview, provide critical statistics for a story or answer a late-night e-mail. It is only with their cooperation that we are able to do what we do on a weekly basis, but this sense of accomodation is unfortunately not universal. Some individuals on campus are reluctant to assist us in the course of our reporting.

Unsurprisingly, it is often these same people who are the first to complain about what they percieve to be an unfair or inaccurate reporting, but in many cases such misunderstandings could have been avoided had they cooperated with us in the first place.

We are a student-run and student-operated newspaper with writers and editors who have busy lives of their own. One hundred and eighty full-time students dedicate a significant portion of time to this publication, and all of us have at one time or another made sacrifices to ensure its success.

We do, however, have an obligation to our readers to portray campus happenings fairly and accurately while at the same time breaking news in a timely manner. Going forward, we humbly ask for your cooperation, and indeed, your understanding, as we diligently try to report the news of a community of nearly 10,000 people.

We understand that sometimes, the requests are at the last minute and believe us, we wish it didn’t have to come to that either. But as a student publication, we are reliant on faculty and administration support to get our stories right. We can’t do it without you.