Mass email: a solution to low student participation
This is the Our View, prepared by the Editorial Board and the institutional voice of The Record.
When Tess, our senior editor, was reflecting back on her college experience, she had a startling realization: every club or organization she joined was through mass email.
That’s right, mass email. What many upperclassmen will remember joking about being the bane of their existence was actually what made her college experience fulfilling—and we contend that she is not alone in this view.
Fast forward to 2022, after two years of the COVID pandemic, we are in a current dearth of student involvement. Clubs have lower membership than previous years, and attendance at events has been a common area of complaint. While COVID burnout is a likely factor, we argue that another is students simply don’t see promotions of events that would interest them.
The replacement of mass email was the Bulletin app and Bulletin email. In theory, this is a great idea—inboxes are decluttered with one email instead of over ten, and students can choose what events to learn more about.
The reality, however, is the Bulletin just doesn’t showcase engagement opportunities prominently enough. Even when searching for one specific post, students struggle to sift through the app’s content to find it.
Now, imagine a first-year nonchalantly glancing through. We bet they won’t be attending events or joining clubs.
The experience of glancing through a list of links is simply not as engaging as an email directly to your inbox saying, “Join a rugby practice!” or “Accounting majors: attend an alumni panel.”
In addition to these challenges, we argue that the ability to swipe important events on topics such as race, gender or other important issues off one’s radar in an instant is an alarming option for student development.
This is not to say we should revert to our pre-pandemic email-filled lives of clubs sending emails seemingly every day cluttering our inboxes. Juniors and seniors vividly remember receiving three emails in an hour regarding a club or organization’s general meeting.
However, a happy medium between the Bulletin app and twenty emails a day could be maxing out club emails to once a week. Clubs and organizations having a set number of emails they can send out would force them to prioritize their announcement but would still give them the opportunity to more directly reach their community.
As apathy lingers in student engagement, The Record Editorial Board is calling for the resurrection of mass emails. The impacts of the Bulletin app—in conjunction with the aftermath of the pandemic—continue to cause student engagement to lag. A middle ground, in the form of regulated mass email, can assist our student body to return to hope, energy and promise.