In the modern world, phone messages and mail have been speedily replaced with copious amounts of emails, especially here at Saint A’s. Gone are the days where one would read bulletin boards to get the latest news on campus- now all you really need is a computer or, in many cases, a cell phone.
For the past five days, I have been carefully monitoring my inbox. The resulting number was a total of 75 emails, of which eleven pertained directly to me and three to the Class of 2016. The rest were all school-wide emails.
Using this week’s data, 81% of my received emails were from various clubs and offices that I have no specific affiliation with. There are announcements about fundraisers, events, meetings, and friendly reminders filling our inboxes each day, leaving us all with one important question: How much of it do we actually need?
Alexa ‘Zoey’ Zukowski, Class of 2015, finds it all to be too much, saying, “I wish there was a place where we could “subscribe” to the different clubs, then we would have our own control over our mailboxes because right now, there is no control and we will keep getting the hail of emails that we do until something changes.” This idea is an essential one- if students were able to choose which clubs and groups we receive emails from by “subscribing” to their email list, inboxes would fill up more slowly and students would only receive the messages they find to be important.
However, another student thinks the emails are nice, and likes to know what the other clubs and groups are doing around campus. But, she agrees that the number can sometimes be overwhelming, leaving students wonder where the balance is.
There are several organizations that send out many emails each week, the most common ones being Student Government, Campus Ministry, the Multicultural Center, and the Institute of Politics. Other organizations also send out numerous emails a week depending on the time of year and what activities they have going on.
Mostly, these are event invitations and reminders. However, how far in advance do students need these invitations, and how many reminders do we need in order to make it to an event? If an organization sends out their invitation a week in advance, is one reminder too few, or too many?
Another problem that many students find is that, because of the large amount of messages received, there is often confusion when searching for an email that they actually want. Several have claimed that they have on occasion deleted emails that are important to them, and, when they are looking for information about a meeting, it takes longer than necessary to search through their inboxes.
So, it hangs in the balance. As the main communication on campus, Saint Anselm’s email system seems to be in need for review. Student inboxes fill each day, with information some find useful, and others find unnecessary. Where is the middle ground between determining how much is enough, and how much is too much?