Chicago Booth Alumni In An Uproar Over Losing ‘Email4Life’ Accounts

Chicago Booth School of Business alumni have been told by the school that their Booth email accounts will be terminated in April

Alumni of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business are angry with their alma mater over a planned discontinuation of lifetime email accounts bearing the school name.

Boothies on LinkedIn have launched a petition to get the school to reverse an announced April 5 closure of all alumni “chicagobooth.edu” email accounts. The signees include a prominent marketing professor and, per comments on LinkedIn, many MBAs and business professionals with Booth ties.

The Booth School, however, is saying that a change in Google’s Gmail sender verification policy necessitates the move, and that “unused email addresses pose a serious security threat for both alumni and the school.” And the school points out that very few alumni actually use their school email accounts.

DECISION ‘UNDERMINES THE TRUST & RELIANCE WE PLACED IN OUR BELOVED UNIVERSITY’

Starting in February 2024, Gmail will require that senders who send 5,000 or more messages a day to Gmail accounts authenticate outgoing email, avoid sending unwanted or unsolicited email, and make it easy for recipients to unsubscribe. The school writes in an unsigned letter posted at its website that the new sender verification policy “will impact the efficacy of forwarded email accounts. Google’s new policy will also have a significant impact on Booth’s overall email infrastructure and will require the school to change the alumni email subdomain from @chicagobooth.edu to @email.chicagobooth.edu on February 1, 2024, as part of the transition to shutdown on April 5, 2024.” Booth alumni are urged to update their contact record with Booth and take other steps to avoid losing data and contacts.

Boothies aren’t happy. In a January 19 LinkedIn post titled “Alumni Unite to Uphold Our Legacy: Advocate for Email4Life and Chicago Booth’s Commitment,” alumnus Chenlin Zhao writes that the decision “significantly diminishes our ability to stay connected and communicate, impacting the bond we share with an institution that has profoundly influenced our professional and personal journeys.

“Like many of our peers,” Zhao writes, “we placed immense trust in this commitment and migrated all our personal and professional communications to our Booth email, believing it to be a permanent and reliable point of contact. The decision to discontinue the service undermines the trust and reliance we placed in our beloved university.” In response, Zhao adds, he and a group of alumni from Booth’s Executive, Full-Time, and Part-Time MBA programs have launched the petition, with a goal to “prompt the Booth administration to reassess this decision.”

The petition, which has more than 4,000 signatures, states that “The decision to discontinue the service undermines the trust and reliance we placed in our beloved university. We also feel that this decision risks giving a signal to the Alumni network about detaching from the community and casts a shadow on the commitment and respect afforded to the alumni community.

”We are submitting this petition for reconsideration of this decision, for exploration of other alternatives, but most importantly for giving voice to those who will be impacted most by this decision: the students and alumni of the Chicago Booth community. The Booth alumni email service is more than just a convenience; it represents a lifelong bond and a symbol of trust between the institution and its alumni.” See the full text of the petition below.

Among the petition’s signers is Booth marketing professor Christopher Krohn. A school spokesperson tells Poets&Quants that it has not received the petition and so can’t comment on it.

PETITION BY BOOTH ALUMNI TO STOP THE DISCONTINUATION OF ‘EMAIL4LIFE’

We, as both current and alumni students of the Full-Time, Part-Time and Executive MBA programs, are starting this petition to convey our deep disappointment and dissatisfaction with the choice that Chicago Booth has made in eliminating email access for alumni. This decision has far-reaching implications for a large and dedicated subset of the alumni community around the world. Alumni, whether recently graduated or earlier classes, as well as current students, worked hard to hold an MBA degree from one of the best universities in the world, and our email is not just a badge of honor, but a vital way in staying connected with the community.

While it was stated that only a small percentage, 6%, of alumni continue to actively use this service, it is important to recognize that this group represents some of the most engaged and committed members of the Chicago Booth community. The decision to eliminate access for everyone based on usage percentage and not impact or value created feels short-sighted, myopic and not representative of Booth’s data driven discipline it instilled in us. We are positive that the email usage will increase as the newer generations of students are digital native and view the Booth email as their digital identity.

From the outset of our time at Booth, we were introduced to our alumni email addresses as our “email for life.” This assurance was not taken lightly. Like many of our peers, we placed immense trust in this commitment and migrated all our personal and professional communications to our Booth email, believing it to be a permanent and reliable point of contact. Spread across the globe, we are ambassadors of the University of Chicago and Chicago Booth. The decision to discontinue the service undermines the trust and reliance we placed in our beloved university. We also feel that this decision risks giving a signal to the Alumni network about detaching from the community and casts a shadow on the commitment and respect afforded to the alumni community.

We are submitting this petition for reconsideration of this decision, for exploration of other alternatives, but most importantly for giving voice to those who will be impacted most by this decision: the students and alumni of the Chicago Booth community. The Booth alumni email service is more than just a convenience; it represents a lifelong bond and a symbol of trust between the institution and its alumni. 

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