Reformers run afoul of e-mail rules

Three student leaders wanted to get their message across -- but ended up with a slap on the wrist from irritated University officials for violating e-mail etiquette. In an attempt to rally student support for their constitutional reform proposal, College senior Dan Schorr, College junior and Daily Pennsylvanian columnist Mike Nadel and College junior Lance Rogers sent an electronic mail message to every undergraduate at the University late Saturday night, asking them to vote in elections held today and tomorrow . But the plan backfired. According to mail.sas system administrator Shumon Huque, the mass mailing was a violation of the acceptable use policy for that system. As a result, the students' e-mail accounts were "temporarily disabled," yesterday, Huque said. "Our view is that e-mail is a one-to-one communication medium," Huque said. "Mass mailings can have a significant performance impact on the system and can negatively affect all mail.sas users." Ordinarily, anyone responsible for sending a mass mailing from a mail.sas account would have their account suspended temporarily and would have to meet with the mail.sas postmaster to discuss why such messages are inappropriate, Huque added. But in this case, the three authors of the message told mail.sas administrators that they needed their accounts to remain open in order to continue campaigning for the constitution -- which will appear on the ballot as "Referendum A1." Huque said the accounts were reactivated shortly after they were closed. Nadel, Rogers and Schorr will still meet with the mail.sas postmaster today, he said. The message consisted of two parts -- a call for students to vote today or tomorrow, and a brief description of the details of their proposed constitution. Nadel said the authors of the plan sent the message to raise student awareness of the proposal. The plan is available on the World Wide Web, but not many students know how to find it there, Nadel said. By sending details over e-mail, its authors hoped to reach more people. Schorr said he has gotten a great deal of positive feedback since Saturday night. "A lot of people were appreciative because they couldn't understand the constitution based on the sound bites in the DP," he said. "People didn't have access to the details of our plan. It's very important that people understand what the new proposal will accomplish." But Dan Updegrove, vice-provost for Information Systems and Computing, said that even if the message was well-received by students, it was not an appropriate use of the University's e-mail network. "It's a fairly bad use of the system resources," he said. Huque said the message should probably have been posted to one of the University's newsgroups.