My E-Mail From the President

I received my first e-mail message from the president of the University on Thursday. Sent from the Office of the President (presoff@fas.harvard.edu), and addressed to me alone, it carried the subject line “Message from the President.” Finally, Neil L. Rudenstine had taken a special interest in my life. He probably took a shine to me the first (and only) time we met, at the first-year welcome barbecue. And now, he wanted to check in on me, to see how my four years had been going, perhaps ask my advice on a matter of University policy.

But it was not to be. I got my first hint of the true nature of the e-mail when I read the first line of the body text: “Contact, Joe Wrinn” University press-flack extraordinaire. The message—apparently sent to all undergraduates—criticizes the Living Wage Campaign’s Mass. Hall sit-in and describes the University’s position on employee pay. I was not the recipient of a special message from our illustrious leader. I was the victim of presidential spam.

Oh Mr. Rudenstine, must you stoop to this level? Must you hold your own little sit-in inside our inboxes, and not go until we feel your pain? Such mass e-mail messages are generally frowned upon by rules of ‘netiquette,’ and, for less august speakers, by the Harvard Arts and Sciences Computer Services. Their ‘Rules and Responsibilities’ reads in part: “Messages . . . should not be sent as chain letters or broadcast indiscriminately to large numbers of individuals. This prohibition includes unauthorized mass electronic mailings. For example, e-mail on a given topic that is sent to large numbers of recipients should in general be directed only to those who have indicated a willingness to receive such e-mail.”

Now I know the president isn’t subject to the same rules as undergraduates. There could be legitimate reasons for a mass e-mail from the president: to notify students of a major university policy, for example, or to send public safety warnings, as many Houses do. This e-mail, however, strikes me as more akin to a personal position statement, making use of resources not available to the other side of the living wage debate in an attempt to sway student opinion. That seems less like a Harvard University Police Department alert and more like Rudenstine sending us his endorsements for local congressional races, informing us of a special deal on Franklin Mint commemorative plates, or helping us to get rich quick. That our president decided to make his side of the living wage debate his first missive to all undergraduates concerns me; that he did so through a mass e-mail seems a breach of netiquette.

At least we can give the living wage protesters this: if their sit-in pioneered the use of mildly coercive tactics to get attention, now such tactics seem the weapon of choice. Everyone, it seems, is grabbing the biggest bullhorn they can find to get their message out.