Our View: Email policy still needs fixing

Our+View%3A+Email+policy+still+needs+fixing

Ever since the email policy changed, we’ve heard that organizations on campus are struggling more than ever to reach out to students.

While The Simpsonian understands the policy was created a while ago, and the Student Government Association (SGA) has discussed ways for groups to communicate more effectively with students, the problem doesn’t seem to be fixed.

The current email policy to keep students informed about events on campus is a long calendar that doesn’t effectively highlight anything. It’s just a piled up list where certain organizations take over and overshadows every other organization on campus. Events start to hide at the bottom of the email.

This isn’t to say this idea was a bad decision, but it might not be working out as expected. Students complain about deleting the email immediately without reading it, due to lack of engagement or being unable to read the tiny font on their smartphones.

For student media, email was a way for us to get in touch with the entire student body for crowdsourcing purposes. Now we can still crowdsource, but the outreach level isn’t the same.

We do understand the previous email method over-cluttered inboxes with emails students may find irrelevant, and we get that not every solution pans out the way it was originally planned. However, as the spring semester continues, the discussion needs to be brought up again.

In SGA meetings last semester, there were discussions about trying to trying to create an effective survey so students would know what they could sign up for in terms of a listserv for specific clubs and organizations. However, it doesn’t seem to have been followed through with.

In addition to this, while students have taken to Facebook and Twitter to promote their organization’s brand and events, they may lack a following, or sometimes their posts can start hiding on timelines and Twitter feeds, making the outreach ineffective.

There needs to be a way we can restart discussions on improving this policy. Hopefully this can be the start.