The bold alert screeching from UF WebMail's login page for the past week is not only a caution to students against giving their e-mail password to anyone, it is also a bright-red warning that the university's e-mail system is broken and needs to be changed.
The recent "phishing" scam is a strong indication that the university might be in over its head by trying to handle a system more than 50,000 students and thousands of faculty and staff rely on every day.
This latest problem presents more than just a minor inconvenience - it could have put thousands at risk for identity theft.
So while various candidates running in Student Government elections have made campaign promises to increase the capacity and services available through WebMail over the years, we're not content with waiting on those results.
Sam Miorelli, general counsel for the now-defunct Progress Party, compared fixing WebMail to putting lipstick on a pig. Despite the ridiculous metaphor, he was definitely on to something.
It would make more sense if UF Computing and Networking Services would stop trying to patch up the major problems with the current system and just give up on it altogether.
It's time to recognize when something just isn't working and look for better solutions.
It's time for a major overhaul.
Last March, Arizona State University, which has about 65,000 students, made the switch to Google's Gmail and hasn't looked back since.
The university was able to transition two of its full-time engineers who had managed the previous mail-storage system to other jobs, and the change will save the university $350,000 every year in storage, maintenance and personnel costs. Talk about efficiency.
Trinity College in Dublin and Linköping University in Sweden have also switched to Google's system. And at Northwestern University, students lobbied their administration to make the change.
Not only will following this trend give UF a feasible way to save the money it so desperately needs, but it will also greatly improve e-mail performance capabilities for students and professors.
Wouldn't it be nice if you didn't have to keep erasing e-mails just because your GatorLink account doesn't have enough storage?
Wouldn't it be nice if you didn't accidentally send the same e-mail to your professor three times because the connection was so bad?
If Gmail was implemented, students could save important messages about financial aid, exams and internships without the problem of clogging up their inboxes.
They could also take advantage of useful tools Gmail has that GatorLink could never offer.
The instant messaging, personalized home pages and Web page-creator services would make staying organized a whole lot easier. A centralized calendar system offered through the service would also make university announcements more accessible.
But, the most important reason for moving to the Google system would be to reap the benefits from a safer, more secure e-mail system with more layers of protection for sensitive personal information.
The billion-dollar company has a much larger staff at its disposal to focus on e-mail issues, and it also has the resources to keep security policies and measures - such as anti-virus patches and spam filters - up to date.
And phishing scams and obnoxious warnings would be a thing of the past.
