Hey Aska!
I have to state right off the bat that you are absolutely awesome!! (I am so not trying to suck-up, purely an honest comment.)
I am currently enrolled at UTM as a first year student and I am planning to transfer to St.George campus for my second year. Also on my agenda is a legal name change, which I am doing so that I can take on my grandfather’s name, but more importantly because I do not want any ties to my father’s name which carry now. My problem is that my utorID and my utormail are composed of my current last name, and seem to follow me everywhere I go (at least as far as my university life) squashing my attempts to completely disown it. Through my own research I found that UofT will not change either of these, even in the event of a legal name change.
What I am wondering, is if my utorID/utormail will change when I transfer campuses. I’m sure you have masterfully already arrived to the correct conclusion that in that situation I would change my name before transferring and will not have to live with my current last name haunting me for the next 4-5 years or God forbid, longer. As you can see I am very determined and this is quite important to me. I would greatly appreciate your help in finding an answer to my question. Oodles of thanks in advance.
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Hmm, well, I’ve looked at the information commons webpage, and I found these two webpages. The first one says that, unfortunately, you cannot change your UTORid, even in the event of a legal name change. I’m not sure how strict information commons is about that, but you could try emailing or calling or going to see someone there and explaining your situation, just to see if they could make an exception to the rule. I can tell that this issue is important to you, so try your best to impress upon them that you have a really, really important reason to change your UTORid. However, be prepared for possible disappointment — aska also tried to change UTORid’s once, and was told that it could not be changed. Still, my reasons for changing my id were much more trivial than yours; I was just wondering if they could’ve changed my id so that it showed my whole name instead of a third of my first name.
The good news, though, is that you can change your email. The second page that I’ve given you says that you should contact your registrar when making a name change. Thereafter, you should be able to change your email address on the UTORid change your email address webpage.
Finally, I have asked the Innis registrar and they have told me that transferring to the St. George campus will not affect your UTORid nor your email, so changing your email/UTORid is probably something that you should look into doing now as opposed to later. However, again, you may want to talk to Information Commons and see if they could make an exception for your case and allow you to change UTORid’s when you transfer from one campus to another.
By the way, this is a link to all of UofT’s current policies. I’ve scanned the list multiple times and haven’t found anything that might help you, but if you find a policy that says you’re allowed to change your UTORid, then you’re in the game — information commons cannot refuse your request.
I hope this helps. Unfortunately, UofT seems to etch our UTORids in cyber-stone.
