On June 30, 2026, all alumni accounts at Eastern Michigan University will lose access to Google Drive, Photos, Docs and all other Google apps, except for Gmail. The university alumni Facebook page announced Jan. 28 that this deadline had been extended from Jan. 30.
After the new deadline, all documents across these apps will be permanently deleted. Future graduates will have 30 days to transfer their documents to another storage source. EMU has recommended that alumni who wish to keep these documents should export their data using Google Takeout, which allows users to download data files that can be imported to a different account. EMU currently estimates the number of living alumni at more than 188,000, but it is not clear how many of them have active Google accounts. According to an FAQ page on the alumni website, only students from 2014 and onward may have access to EMU Google accounts if they are used regularly.
On the university website, EMU stated that the changes were being made due to Google's 2024 shift from unlimited access to a per-user pricing model for Google Workspace for Education. A spokesperson for Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
For alumni like Brittney Barros, these changes may be significant.
"I'm a first-generation college student. I grew up homeless and in foster care," Barros told The Echo. "I didn't know much about email literacy or email etiquette ... I just learned like literally two years ago or a year ago, that you should make a separate email account for all your personal stuff."
Barros, who graduated in 2020, said that nearly 12 gigabytes of her personal files, including essays and legal and financial documents, were saved on her EMU Google account. She said she planned to export her documents using Takeout but that she hadn't been able to get to it yet.
Barros said she found out about the changes by accident while checking the EMU website for loan forgiveness information. After searching her inbox, she said she had not been sent any email notice that her files would be deleted. In recent weeks, she said that she has tried to spread awareness of the deadline herself and that some alumni have been finding out about the changes for the first time from her.
As of Jan. 19, the upcoming changes were not announced by EMU on Instagram or X, formerly known as Twitter. The EMU Alumni Association and IT department were not immediately available for comment.
In Jan. 2023, the University of Michigan began enforcing their own data restrictions on alumni and retiree accounts. Affected U-M account holders have a grace period of 90 days to reduce their storage below 15 GB. If the deadline is not met, their account is deleted entirely. Barros, who is also a graduate of and student at U-M, said she thought that U-M had done a better job at informing alumni about the change than EMU.
"They would spam you with emails like, 'Hey, this change is coming. You guys better prepare for it. Sorry, not sorry, but this is what's happening.' But EMU, they're just silent," Barros said.
An email received by Eastern Michigan University and University of Michigan alumna Brittney Barros on April 9, 2024 warning of limits to alumni Google accounts.
While EMU alumni may continue to use their Gmail accounts after other services are blocked off, this service has a file sharing limit of 25 megabytes per email, roughly the size of a 15-second iPhone video. Google recommends using Drive to send larger files, but alumni accounts will no longer have access to this service after June 30.
Barros said that, due to the upcoming restrictions, she doesn't plan to continue using her EMU email at all, and she has put her new email address in her EMU email signature. She is also transferring her third-party accounts to be under the new address.
Alumni who wish to transfer their data to a different account can start the process by using Google Takeout and referring to Google's instructional guide.
