On April 16, nearly 50 Boston University students lined up outside the South Campus mailroom, waiting to pick up packages or take care of their postal business. The line stretched down the hallway and out the door, repeating a familiar scene for many students: long waits, crowded pickup times, and an increasing volume of deliveries that are unique to this time of year.
Graduation season always puts a strain on package volume, increasing every week as commencement draws near. Students are receiving caps and gowns, shipping the contents of their apartments and dorms home or to new addresses, receiving finals-week “care packages” from parents, and collecting graduation gifts. These overlapping demands turn a routine campus service into a heavily burdened system during one of the busiest times of the year.
It’s widely known that the U.S. Postal Service is in decline as the overwhelming use of email replaces letter writing and “paperless” bill paying and online advertising replace much of the old “snail mail.” But while flat rate mail steadily decreases, there has been a huge surge in package delivery. The increase in packages reflects a broader shift in Cen Z students, who have grown up with online shopping that began with Amazon and is now available from virtually every retail company in the world.
A Mintel survey on Gen Z and millennial shopping shows that most purchases are made online, with 95% of Gen Z reporting that they shop online. It is so pervasive that 60% of Gen Z teens and 56% of Gen Z adults make online purchases every week. To put the increase into perspective, roughly 10 billion packages were shipped in 2015, but that number is expected to grow to 32 billion in 2026.
Inside the South Campus mailroom, packages are processed in a steady but strained rhythm this time of year, as the staff cycles between sorting incoming deliveries and managing the pickup counter while students wait in lines that often extend outside during peak hours. The scene reflects how national shifts in commerce and communication have filtered down to the campus level, where university mailrooms increasingly function less as traditional mail centers and more as high-volume package processing hubs.
Calvin is a journalist from New York who started writing at an early age. While pursuing his Master of Science in media science, Calvin looks forward to using his love of writing to capture stories for positive impact.
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