Skip to Content, Navigation, or Footer.
Support independent student journalism. Support independent student journalism. Support independent student journalism.
The Dartmouth
July 12, 2025 | Latest Issue
The Dartmouth

BlitzMail is Here to Stay

To the Editors:

I write this letter in an effort to clear up some misperceptions surrounding the Council on Computing's study of e-mail use at Dartmouth. Some misquotations compounded by misreadings appear to be producing misunderstanding.

I will not detail the misquotations; most of them are not serious. I will go directly to the misunderstandings. Neither the Council on Computing (which I chair) nor its ad-hoc subcommittee on e-mail (which I do not) is considering stopping user support for BlitzMail at Dartmouth. Indeed, continued support for BlitzMail users was and remains our first agreed-upon policy recommendation. This was clearly stated in The D's original article on the subject (The Dartmouth, Feb. 24), but it seems that the article's headline, "College ponders shift from Blitz," has misled some readers. The point bears repeating: No one has any plans to discontinue support for BlitzMail users.

What has been discontinued for some time already is the development of new features for BlitzMail. Some work has been required to make it compatible with Windows XP and Mac OSX operating systems, but that is all.

Though the article in The D did not mention it, both the Council and the subcommittee (chaired by Ellen Young from Computing Services) are keenly aware of the benefits we all enjoy from having access to a complete e-mail environment at public computers around the campus, even at our friends' and colleagues' computers. From the start we have recognized this as a very desirable feature of BlitzMail at Dartmouth, and we also understand it may be difficult to reproduce this fully using other e-mail clients. This is another good reason to keep up broad support for BlitzMail even as users migrate to other e-mail clients. I stopped using BlitzMail as my principal e-mail client two years ago (not eight), but I am glad I still can use BlitzMail anywhere else on campus to check my mail, and WebBlitz when I am away.

All that said, many people at Dartmouth, for lots of reasons, now routinely use e-mail clients other than BlitzMail, but as yet Computing Services offers these users no formal support in choosing, configuring and using other e-mail clients. That constitutes a problem. That is why the Council charged the subcommittee with making recommendations about user support for other e-mail clients. Neither the subcommittee nor the Council on Computing exercises any executive functions; we are charged with investigating, discussing and making recommendations regarding computing and information technology across the entire institution. You can help us make well-informed recommendations by completing the alternative e-mail survey on-line at http://websurveys.dartmouth.edu/emailSurvey.