Time To Unleash WMD On Something

We have a 20MB quota for email messages. If you're dealing purely with text that's plenty. When Word docs, PDFs, Excel spreadsheets, etc arrive in my InBox it fills up pretty quickly. For nearly two and a half years I was usually around three to four hundred messages using up 10MB of server disk space. I didn't NEED that many messages, but I manage my InBox pretty well. An occasional pruning session was needed, but I was fine.

For whatever reason, the List-Serv Wars have evolved from never happening, to a end of semester rite, to a beginning of semester rite, to now everyone with an opinion feels the need to vent. I'm all for Freedom of Speech until it clogs up my InBox! I can't delete the emails fast enough. Left, Right, Republicans, Democrats, Stalinists, Martians, and Cat Lovers are offering their opinions and commentary on everything now. One sender yesterday offered a disclaimer noting the information wasn't meant to start a discussion, but simply disseminate information about the time/place of an event. I believe only about 10 replies have been to that email today.

As B. and I noted last night in the atrium these people are our future colleagues and this scared us. You practice like you play. Do they think their behavior would fly in the real world? Do they think a network administrator wouldn't yank their email privileges in a heartbeat? If you believe the answer to the last question is NO, think again. I've pulled the plug on network access before and loved it.

I just spent an hour deleting over 400 messages because I was at 95% of quota. I have to devote almost as much time managing my InBox as I do to study for the Freedom of Speech that so many of my classmates are exercising.

I've reached the only logical conclusion I can think of at this point. Either bring in a Catholic Nun Schoolteacher with the ruler (oh those hurt bad) to enforce the List-Serv rules or perform a surgical strike on the campus email servers to prevent freedom of speech.

Think of it this way people: the job offer that might interest you could be lost in the sea of opinions. Think about that before you hit REPLY.