The State of the Name

Daytona State College’s name has been all over the place. In October of 2007, the school stripped “Community” from its name, becoming Daytona Beach College instead of Daytona Beach Community College. Then on 2008 June 20, a press release was posted to the website announcing the new name as Daytona State College. I passed the college on International Speedway Blvd. on 2008 July 14, and this is what I saw:

New Sign for Daytona State College

However, there are signs all around the campus still saying DBCC or DBC. Even the enrollment banner above the DSC sign still has the old name and website. It must be awfully confusing to visitors or prospective students.

The state of the domain name is even worse. The name has been lengthened to daytonastate.edu, even though early announcements said DSC had procured dsc.edu. All of the faculty and student email addresses are going through another change. My address is the incredibly lengthy richard_thripp@falconmail.daytonastate.edu.

As for the old addresses, DSC’s performance has been abysmal. dbcc.edu was redirecting to dbc.edu a week ago, but now goes nowhere. dbc.edu and daytonastate.edu are currently existing in parallel, and there are links to different domains all over the place. Many links are broken. Hasn’t DSC every heard of HTTP 301 redirects? When I changed richardxthripp.com to thripp.com two weeks ago, I had no problems using them to redirect every page over to the new address. You’d think their sysadmins could do that.

All falconmail.dbcc.edu email addresses are irrevocably broken. I just received this email from the college on the 14th:

Dear Daytona State Student:

Name Change: You may have heard the college Trustees voted to change our name to Daytona State College. Our new name will allow us to build upon the core mission and values that have been central to the college for more than 50 years, while expanding into affordable baccalaureate degree programs. We look to the future for new ways to provide opportunities to our students and to help foster economic development, culture and quality of life in the communities we serve.

Email Address Change: You may have noticed that your FalconMail address has been updated to be first_last@ falconmail.dbc.edu. As of Monday, July 14th, please start using your address as first_last@ falconmail.DaytonaState.edu. If you experience difficulties, your dbc.edu account will work for two additional weeks.

Please note: As of July 11, 2008 the dbcc.edu address will no longer be valid and no mail will be delivered.

Email address for staff will also be changing to the DaytonaState.edu, please review the college website for more information.

To reach the enrollment services offices, you can email:

Admissions@DaytonaState.edu
Advising@DaytonaState.edu
Assessment@DaytonaState.edu
Financial Aid@DaytonaState.edu
Registration@DaytonaSate.edu
Records@DaytonaState.edu
StudentAccounts@DaytonaState.edu

Thank you. If you have any questions about the use of FalconMail you can contact the Helpdesk at helpdesk@dbc.edu.

So apparently, I’ve got 8 days to tell everyone about my new address before richard_thripp@falconmail.dbc.edu breaks. Why can’t every email address and domain work forever? It isn’t that hard to set up.

WCEU Channel 15 is supposed to become WDSC eventually. Their website still says Daytona Beach College, and their programming is just as bad. Some shows say DBCC, some DBC, and probably DSC by now if I was still watching.

I hope they’re sticking with Daytona State College and daytonastate.edu now.