Those of us who awoke Tuesday to find our inboxes filled with replies regarding the Off Campus College Newsletter wondered how so many people had so many things to say.
“Please remove me from this list,” at least 63 graduate students said.
“I’m not an undergraduate. Why am I getting this email?” was another popular one.
Finally, someone else retorted, “It’s Off Campus College, not necessarily undergraduate.”
This last message, a whisper of reason in a morning of cyber mayhem, was apparently not loud enough to thwart the onslaught of spam attributed to a flock of named graduate students.
These students, “not the brightest crayons in the box” according to one agitated undergrad, identified a glitch in the computer system, which has been the only positive thing to come out of this.
Although this “Reply All” glitch was shut down much sooner than we tend to believe — in reality, there were many more than 63 graduates who replied — it may have struck a nerve for many of us.
Some of us remained sore into the evening and, with nothing else to talk about, begrudgingly asked others if they themselves experienced this mishap which left so many spammed.
“Yeah, man. Fucking bullshit,” most replied.
Those who valiantly tried to alleviate the situation by advising everyone to click “Reply” instead of “Reply All” inadvertently added fuel to the fire. The “Reply” message was indeed to the entire listserv, which prompted more emails to pop up in everyone’s inbox.
The fault obviously does not lie with OC3 and Michael Wong, president of the council and the email’s creator. He, like any president of a college organization, sent a welcoming email to the masses and the first from OC3 this semester.
Since early Tuesday morning, Wong has been the recipient of a flood of melodramatic quibbles.
“What makes you think that I want to be on this list anyways,” one wrote.
“I don’t know how I happened to be in this list without being asked,” another said.
One student, however, treated the captive audience to some comic relief.
“I have three pet-peeves in life: 1. Air-brushed dog sweaters; 2. Nickelback song lyrics; 3. Getting pummeled with emails that involve me, and everyone else unfortunate enough to be born within 50 miles of Binghamton University to, ‘please remove me from the list-serv. thank you/I’m graduating soon/i don’t like being spammed/I’m not in the mood/my sorority doesn’t even know I’m a townie–I wear North Face and order my Lost Dog rigatoni with skim milk–see?.'”
Wong insists he did everything in his power to fix the problem.
“When I woke up that morning and realized that the listserv had malfunctioned, I immediately drove to school to meet with administrators in the tech center to rectify the situation,” he said.
That’s all we could ask of him.
It’s safe to assume that future listserv messages will be monitored and limited.
The only valuable thing to take away from this minor episode in Binghamton’s history of cyber malfunctions is that this is indeed only a minor episode in Binghamton’s history of cyber malfunctions.