October 26, 2001

Dear Homewood Campus Mail Services Customer:

As a result of the recent mail contamination incidents in Florida, New York and Washington, we have reinforced our mail-handling procedures at Homewood Mail Services and taken new precautionary steps to protect the integrity of your mail. Though we know of no threats to anyone at Johns Hopkins and believe that the delivery of a contaminated letter here is unlikely, we believe that taking these precautions is the prudent thing to do.

We have, for instance, provided refresher training to our staff on how to recognize suspect letters and packages. We are also putting each piece of incoming mail through a second handling and examination before it is delivered to you. The first occurs during the initial hand sort of mail into each department's individual pigeonhole after its delivery to campus by the U.S. Postal Service. The second examination, added since the recent contaminations began, is performed as each piece of mail is removed from these pigeonholes and before it is bundled and placed into a plastic basket for delivery to a specific campus destination.

Because of the time consumed by these and other new safety procedures, we have, for now, reduced the daily number of delivery/collection visits to your office from two to one. We will, for now, suspend the morning visit and continue the afternoon visit, so that each day's outbound mail from your office can be collected and processed as expeditiously as possible, under the circumstances.

The suspension of the morning visit will continue indefinitely, until we can reinstate it without compromising the safety of your mail delivery.

Please do not hesitate to contact me at (410) 516-4295 if you have any questions or concerns. As a reminder, the university has posted on the World Wide Web a set of guidelines for how to handle any suspicious mail received at your office or home. You can find those guidelines at www.jhu.edu/news_info/news/911/preparedness/mail1.html.

Sincerely,
Andrew Macsherry
Senior Postmaster