January 26, 2007
Confused About My Alumnus Status
I graduated in December. Up until last week, I had no official notification that I had actually done so. Thankfully, I received an e-mail from Dean Pieri stating my diploma was ready to pick up. Woo-hoo! (I was a little scared they would hold it from me because I did not return my Case ID card, as is required according to the back of the card. I expressed my concern over on the Case Forum.)
I was playing around Facebook and saw some of my friends are part of the Case Western Alumni network. I'm still part of the active network. I want in on all the alumni prestige. Not seeing that your status with the university is buried under the "Network" tab as part of your account settings, I figured it wanted me to register an @alumni.case.edu address, like it does for registering with a college in the first place. So, I did a quick search of the Case web sphere for alumni e-mail info. The first hit was http://www.case.edu/alumni/email/. Aside from the site being broken (perhaps it should redirect to this page).
I followed the directions and went to https://its-services.case.edu/alumni/alumni-mail-info.html (loved the single sign-on). It told me to go to https://www.case.edu/cgi-bin/cwruser-application-ssl.pl to set my alumni status. Seems easy enough. I follow the link.
AAAAGGGGGGHHHHHH!!! Visit the link. You know what I am talking about. After I gained up enough courage to put my SSN into the web form (I've done it so many times at CWRU, I figured what's one more going to risk?), the application chimed back and said I can't be found in the database and I needed to put in more info. Thanks, but no thanks. I'm not going to go through the hassle. For all I know as soon as I submit that form, all my info goes to a laser printer in some forgotten corner of the university.
In all fairness to the site operators, I do know a little about what is going on. Someone was kind enough to post the background on the issue. Thankfully, things are being reworked. Anything will be a marked improvement.
End of story: I found the setting in Facebook and I still haven't figured out this alumni e-mail thing. I've looked and looked, but I can't find any information. In a broader sense, I have no clue about anything in IT-land as it pertains to my leaving the university. What exactly are by alumni benefits? I know I get e-mail forwarding on @alumni.case.edu for life. Will my primary abc123@case.edu and firstname.lastname@case.edu forward forever as well? If not, what is the grace time and when will I be informed? Most organizations have a termination checklist and reminders sent out before termination occurs. I was hoping I would get one from ITS in December, before I graduated. Now, I'm worried services I still use (primarily e-mail forwarding on my primary @case.edu addresses) will expire and I will be notified without enough time to react accordingly.
Jeremy Smith, say it ain't so!
Oh, and in case anybody knows what is going on, dump your brain on Email services.
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Comments
Well, I think there should be no reason to have @case.edu and @alumni.case.edu. If a person forgot to put in alumni, then the e-mail will still be able to reach the recipient.
Besides, it seems there may be a problem with the e-mail forwarding, I tried to send a test msg to both of my case addresses, and they are not forwarding.
Actually, I take that back. It just took some time for both emails to get to my yahoo acct.
You keep your userid@case.edu and, I believe, your first.last@case.edu. But, for wacky marketing reasons, they only advertise @alumni.case.edu.
Greg,
The reason that the application website comes back and says that you were not found in the database is because the alumni directory (a separate system which has alums in it who are pre-Case UserID era) has not been updated with January grads. Once we get that list from the registrar, you will be in it, at which point the info you enter (SSN, birthday) will match and you'll be given your alum account class.
You have a 6 month grace period where your email account will still work even if you don't have the alumni class assigned to your account, so there is no risk of losing any email for a while yet Your info will be in our system long before that.
Along with the ability to forward your email to an external address of your choice (which works with any iteration of case email address, @alumni or not, first.last@ or userID@), you also get access to the web-based alumni directory. That runs off the same system as described above.
Like I said in the forum post, a big pain in the butt.
Enjoy,
-Matt
The reasons Matt listed above are correct. You need to fill out that form to become an alum. The Registrar isn't considered the authoritative source for alumni information. The alum people have their own database that feeds that information into the Identity Management System.
On the Registrar's data feed, there is no piece of information that indicates "this person isn't on the feed because it's summertime and they aren't taking summer classes" versus "this person isn't on the feed because they graduated" versus "this person isn't on the feed because he was kicked out." A person either appears in the feed because he is taking classes or doesn't appear on the feed (summertime, graduated, kicked out, transferred -- there's no indication of that; the only information that can be extracted is the lack of his record in the feed).
That's why the 180 day grace period was invented.
After not appearing on the feed for 180 days, your "student@case.edu" affiliation with the University will disappear. And all of the associated services (such as email) will be revoked.
30 days before that happens (and 15 days, and 7 days, and 5,4,3,2, and 1 day), you will recieve an email telling you that it is going to happen and directs you to web pages telling you what that means and who to contact if you think it is in error.
Will my primary abc123@case.edu and firstname.lastname@case.edu forward forever as well?
Affirmative. They will work. And it is written down that the "abc123" and the "first.last" components are permanent.
"Subdomain-ing" (changing email addresses from abc123@case.edu to abc123@alumni.case.edu or abc12@really-we-are-changing-it-as-a-service-to-you.case.edu) the email address (I don't believe) is guaranteed to never happen.
Reasons that may change may involve technical limitations of future mail servers implemented, or may come from certain branding or marketing decisions, or may just happen. As long as I'm still working in ITS, I'll lobby against the changes. That's pretty much the only guaratee I can offer there.