The United States Postal Service has long been providing delivery service to millions of Americans, but with the dawn of the technological age and an increasingly paperless society, the historic organization has been forced to cut costs.

It is for this reason that Marquette’s campus, once adorned with at least five mailboxes, now boasts only one, located on the corner of 16th Street and Wisconsin Avenue.

This box complements Union Station, a post office located in the basement of the Alumni Memorial Union.

The fact that the mailboxes are disappearing is especially distressful to Zach Tretow, a senior in the College of Arts & Sciences. The R2-D2 mailbox formerly located outside the Olin Engineering Center was one of his preferred drop-boxes.

“It’s really a pain … that I have to go down to the Union to use a box now,” he said.

Rob Mullens, manager of Union Station, said the removal of the R2-D2 mailbox along with three or four others was the result of a financial decision by the USPS.

“Having more mailboxes was more labor intensive,” Mullens said.

Mullens, who has been Union Station’s manager for almost seven years, said there has been a definite decrease in the volume of mail being processed around campus over the years.

“E-mail plays a part in this,” he said. “People aren’t sending as much mail.”

Mullens said centralizing the location of mail pickup is one strategy the Postal Service has enacted in an attempt to be more cost effective.

In addition, the costs of mailing items have increased, he said.

There was a two-cent increase in the cost of stamps from 2008 to 2009. The standard one-ounce letter now costs $0.44 to mail.

According to a Feb. 9 press release from the Postal Service, the USPS ended the first quarter of the fiscal year on Dec. 31, 2009, with a net loss of $297 million.

These numbers follow a $3.8 billion net loss for the 2009 fiscal year, according to a November 2009 press release. Joseph Corbett, USPS’s chief financial officer and executive vice president, called the year “one of the most challenging in the history of the Postal Service.”

And Corbett had quite a long history to consult. The Postal Service was founded in 1775 in pre-Revolutionary America with Benjamin Franklin as the first Postmaster General.

John Potter, the current postmaster general, also responded to the recent financial news.

“In spite of the financial challenges we face today, Postal Service employees never lose sight that customer service is our top priority,” Potter said in last week’s statement.

Mullens said he is also dedicated to customer service.

“Our goal is to make the students happy and we do our best to do that, and in doing that we’re happy with the result,” Mullens said.