The Student Association's quest to increase direct interaction with its constituents may soon take them into thousands of undergraduate in-boxes.
SA e-board members approached university administrators at the beginning of the semester in hopes of creating an undergraduate listserv, which would allow them to inform students of major SA events, such as the re-scheduled Fallfest, through the students' university e-mail addresses. According to SA Vice President Joshua Korman, the list would permit SA to communicate with the entire student body.
Both SA President Christian Oliver and Korman said administrators were hesitant due to concerns over whether such a mass mailing is feasible or desirable.
"University administration has changed their minds on this [listserv] a few times, but we'll see what happens," said Korman.
UB's Chief Information Officer Voldemar Innus said creating a listserv is possible, but would require extensive planning.
"However," added Innus, "one person's information is another person's junk mail."
UB's network infrastructure could handle the listserv, Innus said, but the main obstacle in implementing it presently lies in "using the infrastructure in an efficient and reasonable manner."
"We're working towards a coherent, institution-wide policy for working with forms of communication that reach a majority of the UB population," said Innus.
Whether UB's population would be interested in the mailings remains to be seen.
"I have no problem with it," said Martin Breenan, a senior electrical engineering major. "Right now, I feel I miss a lot of SA events, since I'm not on campus too much. This might help me out."
"I really never check my ACSU [account]," said Raquel Agoryen, a sophomore English major, "so this probably wouldn't be of much use to me. But it does seem useful."
Other students were concerned with the prospect of unsolicited promotional e-mail.
"I dislike e-mail I get that I didn't ask for on other mail services," said Dave Ellison, a senior mechanical engineering major. "If this is the same way, I'd really rather not have it. SA already has many ways of informing the student body of its large events. The campus television network comes to mind."
Korman said there would be no unsolicited "spam" e-mail because SA will not provide Internet marketers with student addresses.
Students can also be removed from the listserv by requesting to be taken off the list. "While I'm not positive about the technical aspects of [removing oneself]," Korman said, "that would be fine, from our perspective."
Korman said the listserv initiative is the first of its kind attempted by SA and is indicative of SA's plans for the future.
"We're working on ushering in a new kind of administration which is more Internet-based," said Korman. "This is the type of thing we want to move towards."
