When people look at my computer and notice that I have nearly 5,000 unread emails on my school account alone, they tend to make fun of me for not reading my emails. However if any of us were to receive all the letters for our neighborhoods in the mail everyday, we wouldn’t read them either, because why would we read a letter not for us? So why would I read an email that is not for me? But that is not the question we should be asking ourselves. The real question is why am I getting them?
Every day my inbox is filled with things that fall into three categories. The first: club meetings that I’m not interested in. The second: affinity groups that I am not part of and cannot join. The third: is relatively small group emails that I actually have to read. I understand the need to promote your student organization to an extent. All school emails are a great way to promote your first meeting or even an event you’re hosting. However at some point enough is enough. We don’t need weekly emails about when every club meets, just like we don’t need three emails about when one meeting is or 10 about a single event. At some point, you have to trust that the people interested will show up and that the rest of us have chosen to pass.
So how do we solve this problem? Well some clubs have already solved it. The biggest clubs in the school (MUN, Robotics, The Weekly, Scout, FWPMUN and Scholastic Bowl, etc) don’t regularly send emails out and instead have taken the approach to have either an email list or use a messaging service such as Google Classroom, Discord or Slack that willing members can opt into. Having an opt-in system allows groups to reach the people who want updates, while not bothering the 327 other people.
But having an opt-in system then prompts the question, how do people opt-in? Saying that clubs can send recruitment emails without restrictions would only open the flood gates that were just closed. One option would be to not allow any recruitment emails. Because there are not many other ways to reach the community, I don’t think that would fly or be followed. Instead I propose that groups are allowed one recruitment email per semester plus an extras allotment for any non-meeting event being promoted to the entire Upper School. The limitations would encourage clubs to use all-school emails sparingly, and yes, in fact you can wait to find a room before you send out an email.
To make it easier to recruit students there would be a single place where students can update their selection for what groups they would like to receive updates from. Having a centralized system makes it easier for the club leaders because they don’t have to run it while also decreasing the inbox clutter that we all face.
I don’t think clubs will want the opt-in format. People think that email is effective, but emails are pointless. I have over 5000 unread emails. I don’t read them and I doubt others do as well. Once you start receiving emails from a club that you’re not interested in, more likely than not you’re going to stop reading those emails. When bigger events, such as speakers or other presentations come up, you’re more likely to miss the event because you’ve grown blind to those emails.
WIth the opt-in system you can choose to get meeting reminders and communications or just stay up to date on what a club is doing by hearing their major announcements. I’d even argue email limits might in the long run improve membership in clubs.
The opt-in method will allow more communication within clubs. When you don’t have to send an all school email to communicate with your members, you can send messages more frequently. Additionally if you were to set up a messaging service, you could easily hold live conservations with members, allowing more work to be accomplished.
Though the most important reason for this change is that students stop receiving so many emails, the new system I propose does not have a downside. Clubs don’t lose. They may gain members as well as increase communication and documentation of membership through a central system.
Let’s find a way to get our unread email down to zero.
