Web Critique: SAIC Portal

I am pleased to accept this opportunity to critique the SAIC portal (go.artic.edu). My most significant grievances are as follows:

• When you compose an e-mail, you should be able to conveniently access a school-wide address book. Since e-mail addresses don't follow a simple formula (e.g., firstinitiallastname@saic.edu), I often start composing an e-mail to someone through the portal and then realize that I don't have that person's address, and I have to hunt for it somewhere else. Faculty addresses can be found on saic.edu, but where do you get student addresses if you'd like to e-mail someone who isn't in one of your classes? What if you meet someone at a school-sponsored social event or computer lab or something, exchange names, and later want to e-mail that person to hang out again--how do you get in touch? Does the school not want us to be friends with anyone outside our classes?
  
• Also regarding e-mail addresses: Why don't they let you see the address of the person you're e-mailing when you choose names from a class list? I don't understand why it's some big secret. It makes it even harder to memorize people's addresses that they won't let us access through an address book.
  
• One more e-mail thing: You shouldn't have to manually check a box to save an individual message to your Sent Items folder. All messages should be saved automatically. Who wouldn't want a record of what they sent?
  
• The personal announcements are not noticeable on the Home tab. These announcements should be routed through e-mail so people will actually receive them. The first time a professor posted a personal announcement for everyone in the class last semester, not one student saw it.
• When posting to message boards for our classes, we should be able to save drafts. I've lost a few posts after pressing the "Post" button only to discover I had been logged out.
• As the leader of a student group, I find the "Groups" section ineffective as a communication tool. If I post announcements or make updates to the group page, no one in the group is notified, and I know no one ever goes to the group page after joining it the first time. I use a blog through Blogger and e-mail instead.
  
• The fonts look very outdated. Come on, this is an art school.
  

I grudgingly admit that the portal is not totally awful. A few high points include:

• It is easy to access and use library resources from the portal.
• The job board is nice.
• I've never really investigated the "Customize Me" tab--maybe it would help improve my portal experience to move things around a little bit.
• The events calendar is comprehensive and makes it easy to quickly find out what's going on at school.
• I enjoy the slideshow of featured SAIC art on the Home tab.