Many students may have noticed this semester what seems to be a rise in broadcast e-mails sent to their personal e-mail addresses. These e-mails have been sent by anyone from the Broadcast Center to Athletics Director Skip Bertman.
Mass e-mailing is an incredibly quick and efficient way to get information out to students, said Director of Enterprise Solutions Group Cynthia Hadden. Enterprise Solutions is the company in charge of broadcasting e-mails for LSU.
Mass mailings include broadcast e-mails, listservs and event-driven e-mails, Hadden said.
Some students, however, think many of the broadcast e-mails they receive are irrelevant.
“I think the ones that don’t really pertain to everyone shouldn’t be sent,” said psychology sophomore Sadrian Merritt.
The Chancellor’s Office, the Office of Academic Affairs and University Relations authorize the distribution of broadcast messages to large groups, said Mike Smith, Enterprise Solutions manager.
Broadcast e-mails within colleges and departments are authorized by the dean, director or their designee, Smith said.
Ron Hay, executive director of Computing Services, said the Office of Academic Affairs carefully controls broadcast e-mails because of computer resource issues and the requests’ merit.
Assistant Vice Chancellor of Academic Affairs Jeannine Kahn said there is no written policy for deciding what requests will and will not be sent. “It goes on a case-by-case basis,” she said.
Kahn reviews almost all broadcast requests that are presented to Academic Affairs, she said. Some requests, such as graduate students wanting to do research, are not sent, Kahn said.
If the request is questionable, Kahn may send the request to the provost, she said.
Kahn decides what is important by first looking at the impact the message will have on those who it is sent to, she said. Some messages pertaining to all students, such as school closures or safety issues, are broadcast without question, Kahn said.
“We try to make sure that the message is as brief as possible and straight to the point,” Kahn said.
Hadden said the broadcast e-mail capability only became available in fall 1997.
“At that time, it took several hours to distribute a single broadcast to the entire campus,” Hadden said. “Today, a broadcast is typically completed within two hours.”
However, organizations such as the Athletic Department have their own ability to broadcast e-mails.
“Recently we’ve been able to send out e-mails independently,” said Athletic Department Ticket Manager Brian Broussard.
This evolution in broadcast e-mailing has presented itself in the past month, Broussard said.
Although the Athletic Department now has the capability to send a message to all students, it tries to be selective depending on what the topic is, Broussard said.
“Anything directed to students we send only to students,” Broussard said. “Anything concerning ticket holders, such as a baseball game being rescheduled, we send only to ticket holders.”
Broussard said the Athletic Department, like Academic Affairs, does not send every request it is given.
“We try not to send anything weekly,” he said. “It’s more likely that students will read it if they are only sent it once in a while.”
Some students appreciate the e-mails, while others do not notice them.
“They do keep you in touch with what’s going on around campus,” said English senior Kerr Wilson. “I actually went to the last women’s basketball game just because of an e-mail.”
Interior design freshman Tara Day said she barely pays attention to broadcast e-mails. She deletes them.