By Jesus Figueroa
East Los Angeles College students have no choice, but to use the new glitchy cloud email system to receive information from the school.
Since cloud is new to ELAC, the system has had many problems that have caused students to get frustrated and miss deadlines.
Most recently, the system was down for a day causing students to wonder when the system would be back up so they can complete their work.
An email system that is convenient and checked on a frequent basis is more ideal.
Students should have decided for themselves if they wanted to use an email system that compacts many sources of information instead of being forced to use it.
Now, the district imposes another email.
More information for a student to keep track of during their busy work week.
The abrupt change could have been spread out and eased over the course of the semester by sending emails to both new and old accounts until fully integrated.
The change has caused more trouble for students who were not aware the change of primary email for school information had occurred.
Information was misdirected, left unchecked and unanswered.
Before a majority of the students were aware, the financial aid office had been sending notifications of incomplete financial aid documents to the new system.
Many of these documents have to be completed promptly, but many of the students who had these notifications sent to their new email were unable to respond to them on time.
This caused many financial aid recipients to be denied or have their financial aid delayed.
A delay in financial aid causes many students to not be able to buy the supplies and the books they need to keep up with their classes.
The problem stems from the school not being aware that many students provide an email that is convenient to them.
Although many new features are added with the email, it does not offer the easy set up for push notifications on many mobile devices.
For technical support, students are directed to the Information Technology department for help.
The IT department knows very little about setting up push notifications on the iPhone.
Students are force to adapt to a whole new email that causes problems.
With the fast-paced college lifestyle, most students struggle to check their actual emails.
With Facebook, Twitter and other social networks being the main sources for communication, adding more to the already full list can take time to incorporate and get into the habit of using them.