The number of unnecessary emails that students and alumni receive from Kennesaw State is overwhelming. Between Written by Whitten, the Daily Student News, individual department reminders, frequent newsletters and more, it is common to receive an exorbitant number of emails every day.
An overabundance of emails feels like spam and discourages students from using their college email addresses. This leads to many unforeseen consequences that university leaders have yet to consider.
“I occasionally appreciate the daily student news,” junior journalism major Arianna Lasha said. “But the random, miscellaneous ones clog up my inbox and don’t get read.”
Students are not the only people left with a bad taste in their mouth from the influx of KSU spam. Even alumni rapidly remove themselves from email lists, making it less likely for the former students to be aware of events, donation opportunities or even simply to stay in touch.
“It is so irritating,” alumni Jordan Johnson said. “I honestly just want to know how to remove myself from their list of contacts.”
Without the barrage of spam, KSU student email accounts could have the potential to be fantastic tools. The professional address personalized for your identity is perfect to use on job applications, scholarships and volunteer work.
When students choose to use their personal emails instead of their KSU email addresses because of overflowing inboxes, KSU loses positive association with local businesses and communities — whether the university is aware or not.
“I only provided my personal email to employers during school, especially for professional things that involve a lot of communication,” Johnson continued. “I kept the Outlook account just for school. There were just too many emails to keep track of, and they get lost in the shuffle.”
When more students unknowingly choose not to associate themselves with KSU through their emails, employers may never know that a fantastic student employee is from KSU because they chose to communicate with their personal email instead of their student email.
There are several solutions to lessen spam and increase activity for KSU’s various email lists. For those in charge of composing mass-sent emails, online tools such as MailChimp enable users to keep track of every email sent out, provide lists and percentages of engagement and much more. This tool provides opportunities for leadership to gauge which emails are important, and which should be not be sent.
For students and alumni, Outlook has a function to create separate folders and inboxes for emails that clog up the main inbox. This way, emails that students are disinterested in are not prioritized.
It is necessary to call upon the heads of departments and leaders at KSU to bring this problem to a halt. With the school’s help, KSU will undoubtedly see an uptick in students’ involvement, alumni interest and an increase in the size of voluntary email lists.
