“I like that it comes with more storage,” Shannon Matlock, junior political science major said.

New accounts were made available Sept. 1. Each new address contains the student’s first name, last name and ends with laverne.edu instead of ulv.edu.

“While it is Gmail, it is a ULV account,” said Clive Houston-Brown, chief information officer in the office of information technology.

Houston-Brown said that the new accounts allow for 7GB of space as opposed to the 30MB available with the old accounts.

“We set up forwards in all e-mail accounts,” Houston-Brown said.

Old accounts are still active, but all e-mails now sent to those accounts are automatically forwarded to the new accounts.

Students’ old accounts will only be accessible for four months.

However, old e-mails from those accounts are not easily transferred, as of yet.

Matlock said she has many e-mails she cannot transfer to her new account.

“We are looking at a way to help students migrate mail across,” Houston-Brown said.

Houston-Brown said it is important for students to understand that ULV student accounts are only accessible through the ULV Web site.

Students cannot access their new accounts through Google.com.

Many students were happy with the transition, but some were concerned about problems they had encountered.

“The passwords are not working,” Jennifer Quezada, junior business major said.

“It is inconvenient that I cannot change my password,” Matlock said.

Students originally were provided with a pre-generated password they could not change.

Houston-Brown said OIT was aware of the problem and his department was working to fix it.

Students are now able to change their passwords for the new accounts.

Some students have not started to use their new accounts.

“I have not used it yet,” Steven Urena, senior movement and sports science major said.

“I just keep giving out my old address,” Maritza Ramirez, sophomore athletic training major said.

With the new accounts, students are responsible for making sure that contacts know the new address before the old accounts are no longer available.

Students can access information about the new e-mail accounts at www.ulv.edu/gmail.

Susan Acker can be reached at susan.acker@laverne.edu.