Frustration has built among students the past few years about receiving several emails a week that have not pertained to them, but Mark Bandré, vice president for enrollment management & student development, believes a solution has been found.
Bandré came up with the idea of consolidating the emails that deal with certain organizations into the format of the Wildcat Wire, but have it sent out daily as opposed to weekly.
“So what faculty and staff will do when they want to get an announcement out to all students, instead of just sending one email, they’ll go to a webpage, type in their note, which is submitted to a generic mailbox that Information Technology controls,” Bandré said.
After the student or faculty member sends the message to the IT department, there will be one person who will look over what has been submitted and then it will either be approved, edited or denied if what is sent in is not appropriate.
“All things that are approved then go into a cue and then every morning … Monday through Friday at 2 a.m., this note goes out and will be in everyone’s email account first thing in the morning,” Bandré said.
Bandré believes that students will be pleased about not receiving as many emails, but he is worried that students might delete the Wildcat Wire email and miss out on all of the daily information.
While the Wildcat Wire will list information and events for different organizations, Bandré also hopes that athletic, musical and religious events such as chapel will be included as well.
“I think it will be a positive just from the standpoint of reducing traffic on emails when the majority of the campus might not be involved in that,” junior Sean Webb said. “I also think it will have more people looking at the Wildcat Wire because I don’t know how popular that is on campus to be honest.”
Last year’s Student Senate President Caleb Watts worked with Bandré last year on brainstorming ideas to reduce the number of campus-wide emails, and he is encouraged with the process in which messages will be sent out.
“A lot of other schools do this,” Watts said. “A lot. It works out a lot better than our (old) system.”
Watts and Bandré realize that there could be other changes to daily Wildcat Wire as the year goes on and students react to the transition.
“If anything, it is at least the first step to solving the big problem,” Watts said.
While the daily Wildcat Wire is expected to cut down the number of emails sent, messages of high importance such as ones from University President Pat Long, Dean of Student Cassy Bailey or updates on finances will be sent out separately.
