Contrary to what some students might believe, Tristan Freeman '07 is actually a human being. The former communications chair for the Undergraduate Council of Students said that, during his time in the position, he received multiple responses to UCS's bulk e-mails asking if he is a machine.
"A lot of people e-mailed me because they didn't believe that Tristan Freeman the person actually existed," he said.
Freeman, current chair of the Academic and Administrative Affairs Committee, and Michael Thompson '07, the current communications chair, said that annoyed replies from undergraduates in response to their campus-wide e-mails are not uncommon.
UCS is currently the only undergraduate student group with permanent access to the bulk e-mail system, Thompson said. He added that bulk e-mailing has been "definitely effective. When we ask for a response, we get it." Thompson said that when he is given orders from the executive board, which comprises 12 UCS members, he sends out an e-mail. Thompson is the only undergraduate with access to the bulk e-mailing system.
Although Thompson said that UCS tries hard to be responsible about sending bulk e-mail, several undergraduate students have expressed their anger with UCS for invading their inboxes.
Jimmy Kaplowitz '07 said that, though he understands UCS must have a reliable way to communicate quickly with the student body, he thinks the council should "stick to using it for informing the community about official UCS business such as elections or things."
"For everything else, they should use Morning Mail," Kaplowitz added.
The bulk e-mails are particularly aggravating because no one can unsubscribe from the list, he said.
Thompson, however, said that "Morning Mail is ineffective. Most people don't read it."
Thompson, who has only been communications chair for two weeks, has already received multiple complaints from students. Freeman said that he too received angry and sarcastic reply e-mails, mostly asking to be unsubscribed from the list, which he said is "impossible."
Following complaints from students last year regarding UCS's use of campus-wide e-mail, former Communications Chair Ethan Wingfield '07 was supposed to draft a bulk e-mail policy. Freeman, however, said that it "never happened."
UCS currently has no plans to draft such a policy in the future, Thompson said.
Bulk e-mails at Brown
Many students - Pauline Ahn '09 among them - have trouble fathoming what life was like before the University had an official e-mail client. "I check my e-mail 10 times a day. I guess I'm addicted," Ahn said.
So how did the University and student groups send campus-wide communications before students could receive them with a click of the "Refresh" button on their Internet browsers?
Even Assistant to the President Marisa Quinn was stumped by the question of how campus-wide communications were made before e-mail.
"I have no idea," said Quinn, who regularly sends out campus-wide e-mails from the president's office.
The predecessor to Microsoft Outlook, Webmail - which Vice President for Computing and Information Services Ellen Waite-Franzen called "clunky, featureless and unreliable" - was implemented only a few years before Microsoft Outlook. Before that, paper in mailboxes was the preferred vehicle for campus-wide information.
With the exception of students who have taken many years off from school, no current undergraduate has experienced life before e-mail, when students had to leave their dorms rather than just their beds to check for University announcements.
While most student groups use e-mail as their main tool for spreading information, the majority use listserves or mailing lists that students can join or abandon easily.
The University's official bulk e-mail system, through which several groups and offices can send out campus-wide e-mails, is wired to include every person with a Brown e-mail address. Unsubscribing is not an option.
There are guidelines in place prescribing correct and incorrect usage of campus-wide e-mail. According to the CIS Web site, bulk e-mails must be "essential to the proper execution of daily business" or alert "the community of significant events or changes in governance, policy and practice," among other criteria.
Quinn said she tries to limit the number of times she uses the e-mail system because she understands that people "receive so much e-mail traffic."
"We tend to use it only when there is something that impacts the community as a whole, such as an official decision, actions by the Corporation or any issues that affect the health and safety of the community," she said.
