Ready for you at TU: How the TU post office keeps campus running

By Rebecca Kirkman on July 15, 2020

This story is part of a series on how different departments at Towson University have worked over the summer to keep operations running and prepare campus for the Return to TU.

When Towson University students left their campus housing mid-March in response to the novel coronavirus pandemic, picking up packages was the last thing on their minds.

“It was pretty hectic and crazy because the students still had so many packages here,” recalls Lori Frantz, postal operations manager at the TU post office.

Postal operations staff collected student mail from West Village and brought it to the post office in the University Union, contacting each student to arrange for pickup. “We were sitting on about 700 packages students hadn’t picked up prior to campus closing,” Frantz estimates.

The post office has remained open Tuesdays and Thursdays throughout the spring and summer, operating with extended hours during the weeks following residential moveout to allow for students and staff to pick up their packages.

For the safety of students, faculty and staff, drop-offs and pick ups should be arranged in advance with the post office, observing physical distancing directives. Typically, a member of postal services will load any items for pick up onto a cart and meet the community member in the plaza between the University Union and the Union Parking Garage.

The post office usually accepts a couple hundred packages each day—up to 500 daily during a typical spring term. Despite so many Tigers working and studying from home, the mail continues to pile up. “There are students who are forgetting to change their address to their home, so their packages are still coming,” Frantz says. “We’re averaging between 80–100 packages a week for students who aren’t living here.”

Post office staff continues to deliver to select departments on campus, stepping up when needed to ensure important deliveries arrive safely.

Postal services worked with Financial Services to deliver necessary paperwork and office supplies to staff working from home. The post office has received larger deliveries during hours when Central Receiving is closed, like laptops, medical equipment and even live crickets for the biology department. And in preparation for the arrival of new deans, the staff has coordinated the delivery of dozens of boxes of office equipment and supplies to their offices.

“There may not be many people here on campus, but we’re not closed. We still have to operate as if things are still semi-normal,” Frantz says, noting the TU office’s status as a contract postal unit of the U.S. Postal Service.

In preparation for the fall term, Frantz and her team are reorganizing the post office to maximize space for physical distancing of both staff and patrons. The TU community should expect modified procedures to limit direct interactions, Frantz notes, asking for patience as a smaller team adjusts to a new normal.

Frantz says the post office has continued operating while much of the TU community shelters at home thanks, in part, to her team’s flexibility and dedication despite the constant changes presented by COVID-19. She says they are motivated by a greater goal. “It’s about the university, not about us as individuals.”