Understanding Policy Clearly Isn’t Their Domain

I work in accounts management for a large university. It is university policy that all employees of any type must have an employee email at the employee domain and all students must have a student email at the student domain. This sometimes leads to issues where a student employee or employee who is also a student does not realize they have two accounts.

In this case, a supervisor of student employees is emailing me.

Client: “I’m not sure who to address this issue to, but I received a call from one of the Chairpeople indicating that they have a situation with student employees having multiple email accounts.”

Me: “It is university policy that all employees have an employee email address. We can work with the students to set up automatic forwarding from their employee account to their student account so they do not have to monitor both.”

Client: “I’ve looked at this student’s account, and they have two email accounts. They are listed in the system as a ‘student employee’.”

Me: “Yes, as I said, it is university policy. If they do not want to set up forwarding, we can assist them in setting up proxy access for easier usage.”

Client: “But is it necessary for the student to have two email accounts? Could this be changed so that the student can only have one email account at [student domain]?”

Me: *Pauses* “Yes, it is necessary. Policy.”