In the middle of the semester, the installment of Amazon lockers was revealed beside the entrance of Cafe Demon, located at Eugene P. Watson Memorial Library right off of University Parkway.

These new lockers give the community many new options in terms of giving and receiving packages from Amazon. Bruce Dyjack, the Coordinator of Postal Services at Northwestern State University of Louisiana, said.

“The Amazon lockers at Watson Library are lockers that are run by Amazon. So if you’re a student, or actually anybody in town, you can use them.” This means that the whole operation is completely handled by Amazon, NSU Postal Services do not touch the packages that are to be shipped to the lockers.

“We provided the space, we provided the technology, but the actual transaction will be between Amazon and the customer,” Dyjack said. On Amazon, there now exists an option to select ‘Amazon Hub Locker- Isolation’ at NSU Watson Library.

“You can order an item from your Amazon account, or anyone can order an item and you can just go straight to the lockers and get them. They are run independently from us,” Dyjack said. “So we don’t actually receive them here and bring them over. And right now United Parcel Service (UPS) puts the packages in the lockers, but once the Amazon center in Shreveport opens up, Amazon will be loading those directly.”

With the introduction of these lockers, many wondered what the operations of the NSU Postal Services would be.

“It’s not that we don’t want students come in here, but we’re open from 7:00 AM till 5:00 PM, and I can count on one hand the amount of students that come in here during the school year in that time,” Dyjack said.

Students at NSU live busy lives, and many of us know that a quick trip to the post office is not often in our plans for the day, no matter if it’s during campus hours.

“So if it’s 7 p.m. in the evening, You can go over there and get a package out of the Amazon lockers, just like you can with these lockers here, or if there’s a package in your mailbox.” The post office, located between the Friedman Student Union Building and Kyser Hall, has hundreds of mailboxes set up just to send and receive mail from residents on campus, but those mailboxes are not open 24/7, unlike the Amazon Lockers.

“It’s another option to meet the students where they are.” Dyjack finishes.

With the new lockers now available, and proving to be a much better option than the campus mailboxes as Dyjack said, they surely won’t be seeing a lack of service anytime soon.

“This time of year is a little bit slow, but in the fall sometimes, close to a thousand packages a week are delivered,” Dyjack said. “And I would say 50% of those are Amazon.”

In terms of security, the amazon lockers and the postal service lockers both feature a camera inside, which will identify whomever retrieved the package. This is helpful, but often unnecessary as the lockers require a one time code sent directly to the email of the customer once the package is delivered from UPS.

“The only way you can get into that locker is if you have the email with either that QR code or with that numerical code,” Dyjack said.

But the lockers at Watson are only the beginning.

“We’re leaving open a possibility of getting more lockers for other locations on campus,” Dyjack said.

However, the decision is ultimately up to Amazon, and not NSU.

“Amazon literally paid for those lockers. I wanna say they spent around $15,000 on these lockers. So thank you, Amazon! And if people use these lockers, the more chances we have of getting more lockers here on campus,” Dyjack said.