E-mail: Is it a necessary evil?

If you’ve recently lost a leather pen case or you’re interested in what’s going on at Castleton today, you most certainly are thanking the good Lord for e-mail.Otherwise, you might feel as if your campus e-mail account is being constantly flooded with junk.

Many students throughout the Castleton community complain that they receive way too much junk e-mail. The majority of the e-mails they receive are from people they don’t know, pertaining to subjects they have no interest in.

Jonathan Czar, network administrator for Castleton State College, is essentially the lord of CSC e-mail.

“We want students to know what’s going on here on campus,” Czar said. “The alternative is you sit in your room playing video games.”

Czar is the guy who controls the format and everyday upkeep of the Castleton Internet system. Complaints about the system generally go straight to him.

Czar had one experience with a student that really stuck out. The student was ranting and raving about e-mail. Two weeks later the same student sent out an e-mail to everyone at Castleton informing them that he would be starring in a one-man play.

“The kid went from being really nasty to ‘I want everybody to know about my thing,'” Czar said.

According to Czar, the campus policy is that everybody associated with CSC is required to be on a distribution list so they can be informed about campus information. And the information distributed needs to be related to a campus issue or club.

However, sometimes it is just too much.

Nick Louras, a freshman at Castleton, echoes the sentiments of many who are disenchanted with the e-mail system.

“I get so much crap that it gets kind of annoying when I have to sit down and check my e-mail,” Louras said. “The school should have something that filters out all of the junk mail.”

And don’t think that students are the only ones who notice all of the e-mail.

Drennan Spitzer, English professor at Castleton, summed up the feeling of many around campus with only a few words.

“It’s so easy that we all shoot off e-mails and we don’t consider if people really need them,” she said.

Dave Blow, a journalism professor at Castleton, receives the same e-mails that Spitzer, Louras and everyone else on campus receives, on top of the questions and concerns from students. He acknowledges the fact that e-mail is definitely a necessary evil these days.

“I feel like I’m a slave to e-mail,” he said. “But I have so many students e-mailing questions etc. and I want to be attentive to their needs.”

While many get perturbed by logging into their e-mail account and constantly finding those pesky “lost and found” messages, the lost item does in fact belong to someone.

“Everybody hates getting those until they lose their I-Pod,” Czar said.

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