Every Augustana student and faculty member receives countless emails per week and even per day from groups on campus. These emails range from asking students to join a club, attend a social function, donate to a charity or become aware of a social issue.
Often, these emails do not pertain to most students, such as emails directed to only males or other activities most students are not interested in.
Although campus involvement can be important, some emails are meant to reach a certain group of students, yet are still sent to the entire campus body. Junior Samantha Murad, a bio-chemistry and pre-medicine double major, has been filtering her emails since she arrived on campus.
When asked why she started this practice, she said, “most of them I don’t need to look at; they don’t pertain to me, like [intramural] men’s sports.”
The process of filtering emails allows a student to manage the flow of incoming emails, eliminating some of the electronic clutter, without blocking important messages such as incidents reports or other emails from administration.
Murad said there is a simple way to filter these unwanted emails, but it can be done. Whenever an unwanted email is received, email users can view the email and click the down arrow next to the reply button in the upper right-hand corner.
Next, users can click “filter messages like this.” This will allow users to insert certain subjects or email addresses that they wish to block. Lastly, users will need to decide whether they want these emails marked as read or instantly deleted all together.
After that decision, users can click “create filter,” and the filter will be implemented.
If at any time users need to edit or delete these filters, they can be accessed by clicking the gear icon in the top right corner. Users can then choose “settings” and click the “filters” tab.
Each student has the ability to create filters that reflect his or her specific interests while reducing undesired messages. Murad insists that she has not missed out on any on-campus activities as a result of her chosen filters.
Many students may feel this way but not all have taken this approach.
Junior Daniel Kochanski, a history and classics double major, does not check the majority of his emails. Although he does skim his inbox to check for important emails, he does not mark any emails as “read” that are not important to him, based on the subject line.
“I skim through [the emails] but you can tell most of them are unimportant,” said Kochanski.
This method of dealing with the clutter has left Kochanski with 7,587 unread emails, dating back to the end of the 2012-2013 academic year.
Sophomore Gage Meyers, a former member Augustana’s IT department, uses a similar system of email management as well.
“It’s incredibly useful; it is easier for students to check their emails,” said Meyers.
On any given weekday, the quantity of emails sent out to the student body and faculty can reach 10-20 emails.
After questioning dozens of Augustana students it was clear that the sheer amount of emails are considered an annoyance. Most students seemed to think there would be no significant impact on his or her campus involvement if the various campus-sponsored emails were no longer received.