E-mail List Flooded After Technical Glitch

Members of the Institute of Politics’ (IOP) events e-mail list recently found themselves the victims of a deluge of e-mails that came from all corners of cyberspace—and the globe.

The confusion centered around a glitch that allowed non-administrators to send posts to the entire list. As a result, over the past two days scores of e-mails from users seeking to unsubscribe from the list bombarded the inboxes of not only the administrators for whom they were meant, but also the hundreds if not thousands of individuals who receive the IOP’s weekly annoucements.

“It’s clogging up my inbox,” said Stephanie L. Safdi ’05. “This is not something I would have expected from the IOP list. They are one of the better organizations.”

But Adams House resident Ryan M. Rappa ’05 said the blame for the cyber pile-up lay more with those sending messages than the IOP.

“The people e-mailing are at fault for not reading e-mails closely enough on how to unsubscribe,” he said.

Those on the IOP mailing list reported receiving 20 to 30 e-mails today in their inboxes, though some estimated the numbers at 60 to 100.

Many battled the inbox avalanche like Kerry A. Flaherty ’06 said she did, looking for IOP in the subject line and simply deleting the messages. She said a number of the responses were coming from people outside the Harvard community.

Andy Solomon, an IOP spokesperson , said yesterday the problem had been recognized and that the organization’s computer services staff had corrected the glitch that allowed the e-mails to get through.

Solomon said that to his knowledge, the list had never experienced this type of problem before. He said an e-mail had been sent out to all list subscribers apologizing for any interference in people’s e-mail systems.

“Computer glitches do happen from time to time,” said Solomon.

E-mails streamed in all day yesterday. Most were “exasperated” pleas to be taken off the list; others demanded to know what was causing the problem.

One lone correspondent even asked to be added to the list.

Several well-meaning list members, seemingly unaware of the dozens of e-mails already sent, continued the e-mail storm by responding to the list with messages notifying others of the problem.

Joshua A. Barro ’05 took matters into his own hands—albeit unsuccessfully.

“I tried to send an e-mail to the whole list encouraging people to stop e-mailing,” he said of his post which failed to make it through to the list. “Apparently I’m the only person to not be able to respond.”

In the end, he resorted to older technology.

Barro said he attempted to call the IOP by phone to inform them of the problem.