Each week, students’ inboxes are flooded with emails. From bake sale announcements to weekly club meeting reminders, students have begun to ask, should club emails sent to the entire high school be limited in any way? Juniors Charlie Moog and senate head Felicia Miller drafted a proposal for Student Government to try and answer this.

“Student inboxes are clogged with emails from clubs and all their activities and every one of their meetings and so the goal of the proposal was to try to clear out the inboxes a little bit by limiting the amount of emails clubs could send to students,” co-author Miller said.

The initial proposal allowed for a finite number of emails from clubs to be sent to the entire student body. Clubs would communicate with students through an exclusive email list with all the emails of students interested in the club. At Club Fair, upper schoolers would learn about the various clubs and would sign up for the ones which they would like to receive information about in the future. After Club Fair, an upper school gathering in which club members try to attract prospective students by presenting a little bit about how the club operates, clubs would only be allowed to email the students who have signed up for their information.

“Because Club Fair is only 20 minutes, I can’t even imagine that students will begin to visit even half of them during that time,” Senior and Model UN captain Ray Blicketin said. “There’s no way they can learn enough about each club to be able to know if they want to be in that club for the rest of the year or not.”

Within this original proposal, clubs were only allowed to communicate with the whole student body only if they were composed after Club Fair, had an event irregular from a typical club meeting, or at Morning Exercise announcements.

The goal of the proposal was not just to limit incoming emails, but also to draw more attention to the specific clubs which students find particularly intriguing. “Because you’re getting less emails from clubs,” Miller said, “you’re more likely to open them and actually read through them because you know it’s not just another invitation to a club you’re not even a part of.”

The proposal was created with the whole student body’s opinions in mind. “The student body can edit the proposal in senate,” Miller said, “so that it can represent what everyone thinks.”

Not all students felt as though their voices were heard. Some imagined problems with the alteration. “I don’t feel like all groups are being considered,” Freshman Carter Wager said. “A big issue would be with affinity groups. Not every student wants to get involved right away, and as part of the Pride group, we know we have to send out emails every week to be able to reach out to kids who are discovering something about themselves. We need to remind them that they too can be included in the club even if they didn’t sign up in the beginning of the year.”

Some students felt that it is crucial for clubs to frequently send out emails to the whole high school because it allows for people to rethink their connection with the club. “Every time you get an email in your mailbox, you are forced to reevaluate your interest in that club, Freshman and frequent senate attendee, Julia Auerbach, said, “If you’re void of getting that email, you don’t have the opportunity to make a new decision.”

The authors of this proposal recognized the issues which had to be worked out in order to create the most effective proposal. “We saw that there was a little bit of a problem with just stopping clubs from emailing completely, and we wanted to make sure that it’s not preventing them from increasing attendance in their club,” Miller said, “so we are editing the proposal in senate to try to fix things like that.”

“After being discussed in senate on January 10th, the proposal moved beyond senate meetings and into plenary  on date January 26th, where it was ratified and finalized.”

The passed proposal provides more ways to inform the students of clubs without stopping them from sending emails.

“Now everyone can hear about the clubs,” Miller said, “so hopefully more students will be able to join activities they are interested in.”