Listservs spark dialogue, conflict

Snowball fights are fun, but if you want to stay warm and vent your frustration, try initiating a listserv war. While some students find these listserv battles — often begun when one student’s e-mail sparks an influx of “reply all” responses — amusing, others consider them burdens to their inboxes.

Taking advantage of the end-of-semester rush to sell old coursebooks, Carlos Roque ’10 sent an e-mail to the Scully Hall listserv advertising a private textbook buy-back company. Objecting to Roque’s use of the listserv, Aaron Smargon ’11 responded with a reprimanding e-mail and sparked a retaliatory series of responses that flooded members’ inboxes.

Many groups on campus — residential, academic and recreational — have listservs that are both voluntary and involuntary. Students must choose to add themselves to the former, whereas they may be automatically signed up for the latter. Recent debates — often on listservs themselves — have raised concerns over the proper use of such listservs, including whether advertising, personal plugs and political debates should be allowed.

Smargon said he believes the content of a listserv should depend on whether or not it is voluntary.

“Voluntary listservs can be used in any platform capacity,” he said. “Involuntary list serves, however, must serve organizational purposes, which depend entirely upon the organization.”

Choosing to “reply all,” Smargon responded to Roque’s e-mail by stating that he found “this shameless plug extremely obtrusive” because it was sent to a residential e-mail list.

“It is my hope that this e-mail address list will continue to serve its residential purpose,” he wrote in the e-mail.

Smargon noted that another student, Dennis Walsh ’11, sent a sarcastic reply.

“Aaron: I used to be touchy and irritable, too,” Walsh wrote in the e-mail. “The smallest things would set me off — well, nothing as small as a single e-mail from a hallmate ... That is, until I found our about the HoMedics Back Revitalizer (With Heat).”

Walsh did not respond to a request for comment.

Other debates have broken out Whitman College’s listserv, WhitmanWire. One student, Jake Sally ’12, wrote in an e-mail to the list that the listserv had become “embarrassing.”

“Can you not see that if people are having to unsubscribe the community is not that of Whitman as a whole, but that of only the highly opinionated and highly interested?” he wrote in the e-mail. “I’m trying to speak for the angry, seething mass of people who hate WhitmanWire now because people are literally abusing it.”

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Sally did not respond to a request for comment.

After receiving many complaints concerning the content on WhitmanWire — which he created — Whitman College Director of Studies Cole Crittenden wrote an e-mail noting that he had no intended uses for the listserv and that the members could decide how it should be used.

Crittenden explained that students commonly used the listserv to borrow items, advertise lost and found items, send reminders to clean kitchens and lounge spaces and spread word about movie viewings.

But more controversial topics such as marriage equality have also found their way onto the listserv. Elizabeth Swanson ’12 sent an e-mail on the topic that sparked a night-long e-mail exchange debating the wire’s purposes.

“I think it is respectful for users to follow the regulations and keep to the purpose set forth by the listserv creator,” Swanson wrote in an e-mail to The Daily Princetonian.

“Any e-mail within those boundaries is fair game,” she explained. “Also, how do people have enough time on their hands to stir up controversy about listserv use?”

Though WhitmanWire has sparked controversy, Crittenden said that this has not affected the size of its membership.

“WhitmanWire has never gone through a period of contraction,” he said. “Even this past fall, when many students were debating the appropriate uses of the list, there was a net gain of members. The list has only grown since its inception, and it now includes approximately four-fifths of the Whitman College population.”

Crittenden added that Rockefeller College has started its own listserv modeled after WhitmanWire.

“The beauty of the listserv,” he said, “is that it is regulated by its members, who take ownership of the list and reaffirm the values of inclusiveness, civility and respect for e-mail inbox size limits!”

Correction: An earlier version of this article contained an error about one listserv exchange and has been updated.