University’s email policy change causes some alumni to lose valuable data

POCATELLO — A recent change in policy around Google Drive access for alumni’s emails has caused some to lose access to files that documented memories from their college days and beyond.

Idaho State University has changed its policy to limit lifetime @isu.edu email addresses to five gigabytes of email storage, eliminating cloud storage through Google Drive or other cloud platforms. This was in response to a change in Google’s policy towards education accounts, which eliminated unlimited storage and allocated 470 terabytes of data to the university.

“At the time of the contract, ISU was well below the 470 terabytes, but consumption started growing exponentially and continues to do so,” Renae Scott, chief information officer of Information Technology Services, told EastIdahoNews.com.

The university was exceeding its monthly quota by almost 100 terabytes, Scott said. It had to rethink the its usage and “make sustainable administrative decisions” about how to move forward while staying under the data limit.

Scott pointed out that ISU has had to limit storage on all @isu.edu accounts in varying amounts.

“ISU made the administrative decision to create a sustainable, budget-conscious plan for managing the overall storage consumption in Google and have established quotas for all ISU affiliates, not just for alumni,” she said.

It’s a change that has surprised many alumni, who say the university could have communicated more effectively about it.

“I was less upset it was happening and more upset with just how horrible their communication was, how much it seemed like they really did not care,” said Kory Christensen, who graduated from ISU with his master’s degree in 2015.

EastIdahoNews.com interviewed six alumni upset by this change and felt the university needed to offer more warnings that it would go into effect.

Ryan Sargent, executive director of the ISU Alumni Association, said the association did everything it could.

The Alumni Association emailed former students on Nov. 9, 2023. A follow-up email was sent on Jan. 9, 2024. Both emails informed alumni that the policy change would take effect on Feb. 1.

Sargent said the university also sent out a notice in the mail. Additionally, people who used more storage than average were contacted individually by the Alumni Association and warned of the change.

“We did everything that we could think of to try to give people notice,” Sargent said.

Katrina Hofstetter, who graduated from ISU with her master’s in 2014, is one alumnus who didn’t know about the policy change before it took effect. She had 350 gigabytes of data on her Google Drive, which were all moved to her backup folder when the change occurred.

“Basically, what it did is it dumped all 350 gigs that I had on that drive onto my desktop, which has basically frozen my computer since it happened,” Hofstetter said.

When Hofstetter removed the data from her external hard drive, it also unsynced her work email and OneDrive account from her computer. She says she has lost at least eight weeks of work because she has to resync the accounts to her computer, which contain five terabytes of data between them.

Although she saw the initial email from the alumni association, she didn’t give it much thought because it looked like a spam email. She didn’t see any other emails after that.

Hofstetter said after she got her Ph.D. at Texas A&M University, she received multiple emails that became more frequent the closer the deadline got before it deleted her school email account.

“What’s upsetting is the lack of communication. I could have handled the transfer of the data beforehand if I would have known,” Hofstetter said.

Kryston Carling, who graduated in 2019 with her PhD, lost access to her past projects, documents and photos from her days in college. As a practicing pharmacist, she referred to her previous projects and notes. Now, she can’t go back and reference those anymore. There were also pictures from early in her marriage and copies of childhood photos on her Google Drive.

“I feel a little bit defeated, for sure,” Carling said. “I don’t honestly really know how to feel. It’s sad for sure and frustrating, as well, because I don’t feel like I was well-prepared or informed of that.”

Carling said that despite being good about checking her email, she didn’t see any of the notifications from the Alumni Association.

Carling reached out to a handful of her friends and former classmates and asked about their experiences; they also hadn’t heard about the change and lost everything they had stored on Google Drive.

“I definitely don’t think that they tried very hard to let people know,” Carling said.

While access to Google Drive has been eliminated, alumni can still use their student emails. Sargent said that won’t change.

“It’s unfortunate that Google has changed their storage policies to make it not affordable to allow unlimited storage; we have worked really hard to keep our promise of a lifetime isu.edu email address,” Sargent said.

Scott affirmed the university is doing everything possible to continue lifetime Gmail access.

“While we are making every effort to continue providing isu.edu emails to our valued alumni, it is also essential that our approach to data storage management supports functionality for students, faculty and staff,” Scott said.

Despite this policy change, Sargent said ISU remains committed to providing alumni with @isu.edu accounts for life.

He wanted to thank the alumni for “everything that they do for ISU and their patience and understanding as we’ve worked to transition with these new policies that have been imposed on us.”

For alumni who have lost access to their Google Drive, there may still be time to recover the files.

“Google allows the university’s Google administrator to recover deleted files up to 25 days after they were deleted by the user. Alumni who need to retrieve files can contact help@isu.edu for more assistance,” Scott said.