University of Alaska Anchorage (UAA), a mystery

My daughter started at the University of Alaska, Anchorage in the Fall and loves it. She lives in the dorms and it has been a fulfilling social time for her as well. But there is one problem. She doesn't get her mail. She will get packages but not mail. In fact she says that no one in the dorm gets their mail. About two months ago my wife sent a check to her and she never received it. Even worse she has a friend who got a summons to appear in court for a traffic ticket. He did not receive the summons and a warrant went out for his arrest. The police stopped him and he was arrested and had to post bail to get out.

The day before yesterday my wife came to me and said she would send Anna a check by Western Union, an expensive proposition. I suggested to my wife that she send the next check by registered mail. That letter is now in process with its tracking number.

I set out to investigate this problem. First I looked up numbers for personnel at UAA and found the "mail room" with a number of employees and their work numbers. There is also an email where I could directly ask them about their success in delivering mail.

As I heard Donna talk with Anna on the phone yesterday, it came to me that we were dealing with an issue that could possibly an federal offense. I went to the US Postal Inspector's website and sure enough there is a place inquiries and complaints. I will make one of each.

I made a very interesting discovery while googling the UAA initials and post office. I came up with a Wikipedia reference that stated the US Postal Service abbreviation for mail to go to the "dead letter office" was "uaa" -undeliverable-as-addressed - also the initials of the University of Alaska at Anchorage. I wonder if I could have stumbled on to something. The wikipedia page also states "In 2006 approximately 90 million undeliverable-as-addressed (UAA) items ended up in this office." Certainly there were even more "dead letters" marked "UAA" in 2009 and mounting numbers in 2010. How many of these were meant to go to University of Alaska, Anchorage?