When I was little, my mom used to tell me a story: The Boy Who Cried Wolf. I cannot help but think of this story each and every time I am actually able to log into StagWeb and there are a slew of Campus Announcements filling my inbox.
In the past month I have received more than 100 Campus Announcements. This is more than three times the number sent to students during the month of September one year ago. The Campus Announcement e-mail distribution list is a great tool for administrators, Computing and Network Services and clubs to communicate with the student body. Their excessive use in recent times has pushed my level of caring through the floor.
I would not want to discredit any particular group and say that they should not be able to send announcements to the student body, but simply put, there are just too many. I get more than 65 e-mails per day and most Campus Announcements do not apply to me enough to merit the effort required to press the delete key, which I do almost instantaneously.
The solution to this problem is that more students should take advantage of the severely underutilized SCT StagWeb feature that allows you to make groups and distribution lists. In addition, student activities could send out one weekly or daily bulletin e-mail that has these types of announcements similar to the “Campus Weekly” flyer.
Students need to get important announcements. The pure volume of announcements sent recently has muddied the definition of important. Most students need to know when the Internet will be taken down for the weekend, but few truly care that The Mirror will be holding a catered open house for faculty, staff and all students next Thursday from 5 to 6 p.m. with our weekly meeting to follow at 6 p.m. But hey, stop by anyway. Free food.
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