Rant: Dear McMaster emailing system,
Karen Piper
The Silhouette
Dear McMaster emailing system,
I am a second-year Commerce student who recently transferred from another University. And ever since I started off here, there has been one thing I haven’t been able to ignore. I have received over 70 emails from McMaster. Within one month.
Now, I do not want to be misunderstood as someone who isn’t technologically savvy and not embracing the culture of electronic communication, trust me, I am. However, when does it become too much information?
Have you ever heard of the “use it or lose it” phenomenon? It means that even if our brains have an astonishing storage capacity of one million gigabytes (yes, it has been researched), if we deem the information not to be relevant or meaningful, chances are we are not going to remember it. The fundamental fact here is that many students disregard a significant proportion of emails from this school. It’s a little sad, but extremely true.
Before I continue, I must propose a solution. To stop this annoying bombardment of information, each faculty, discipline or club should summarize their information, reminders and invitations into weekly emails, or even bi-weekly emails. That’s it, no more.
One may say that sending an email once a week may cause students to forget the information the email was relating to them. And although that is in fact a valid criticism, it is ultimately up to the receiver of such information to determine what is imperative knowledge and potentially beneficial.
For instance, an email received from International Student Services about Welcome Week activities may be quite valuable to a first year student who wants to actively participate in campus events and become fully acquainted with their new McMaster experience.
However, another first year may just want to settle in quietly without taking part in all the seemingly ‘fun’ activities. This does not mean that sending the same Welcome Week email six times in two to three days will convince the latter student to engage.
After saying all of this, I hope that someone in a key position to make a change in the volume of emails we are forced to encounter reads this article and comprehends its main idea.
We all have a quest for knowledge and information, but please McMaster, enough is enough. Lay off the emails … at least just a little.
Yours truly,
Spam filter’s No. 1 fan
