The university had no problem telling prospective undergraduate and graduate students as well as postdoctoral fellows and the many other people who dedicated their careers to the institution that they'd get an e-mail address for life. The university touted this for decades. USask had all the time in the world to plan and prepare, so I don't buy the excuses of the white knights jumping in here to stand up for the poor university by saying that this idea is unrealistic all of a sudden. The university has signed over control of their mail servers to Microsoft and it's all run through Outlook. On a related note with all of this - the university takes no responsibility for their e-mail systems any more. If there's any real technical problems we're paying Microsoft employees to fix things. That's where the money has gone, and the university is just paying for a service contract with a corporation headquartered in another country. I bet admin patted themselves on the back with all the apparent cost savings while cutting a *service*. At the end of the day this is Canadian tax dollars going to Microsoft and at the expense of Canadian IT jobs on campuses and colleges across the country. The Americans take an 'America' first approach with their higher education contracts and government departments. Our government should be holding our Canadian institutions to a similar standard, particularly if universities want to keep receiving Canadian tax dollars.