Hunter
01/26/27
University of Iowa students say they’re being bombarded with mass e-mails from the school that don’t apply to them.
The Gazette reports one student who responded to an anonymous survey conducted in 2023 complained that their inbox was being flooded with everything from Greek life to Hawk Shop ads.
The school has acted on the complaints, which also came from faculty and staff. Earlier this month, the Office of the Vice President for External Relations is partnering with the Office of Strategic Communication to cull the number of mass emails.
A release said, “The cumulative amount of time spent by faculty, staff, and students processing unwanted email represents an enormous loss of personal and institutional productivity. Using email impersonally or indiscriminately will harm the credibility of the university and make our faculty, staff, and students less likely to read email that would be of importance or of interest to them.”
Going forward, the four officially-administered mass email lists for “all faculty,” “all staff,” “all undergraduate students” and “all graduate students” will establish guidelines for appropriate mass-email use, curtail the number of emails, and ensure the communications are accessible, concise, consistent and coordinated.