“Apparently, a postcard from my parents didn’t arrive because my mailbox was full, but this is well-formatted, I guess,” shared one Warren student after checking her mail.
Photo by: Stephen Lightfoot
Students should expect an increase in emails sent to their student emails in the coming weeks, as a result of an implemented UCSD Spam Quarantine filter change. The service currently stops various emails on topics such as career fairs, student involvement, and “other probably useless garbage” from reaching students directly. Instead, the emails are grouped into a list and sent as a single email described simply as “End User Digest.”
The change was proposed by Paul Arsick, a faculty member on the UCSD Email Security team. “We figure that students don’t want all those useless emails cluttered in their inbox, so we decided to do something about it,” says Arsick, “However, sometimes these students are too unpopular to get enough emails to make this thing work right, so the spam quarantine just takes one email and sends a spam digest with that one email. It doesn’t really do much other than fill their inboxes with spam quarantine emails. We decided to solve this by sending more emails about fundraising.”
In addition to preventing students from noticing what is being filtered out of their inbox, this service will now also filter more non-fundraising emails. The new filtered content will include graduation ceremony information, class registration notifications, and all Piazza user digests “because we know you hate them and you’re just too lazy to edit your notification settings.”
Jane Dobbets, Director of Email Security at UCSD, assured that the service blocks unnecessary emails. “There is a lot of malicious activity directed at student emails, and it is my job to stop them from reaching our poor, vulnerable students. You think that single email from the La Jolla Playhouse is innocent? Hell no. They’re going to steal your money; you’re going to lose money that you could donate to UCSD Giving Day. U give us Ur money and U get more emails frUm Us!”
Some students have expressed discontent with the quarantine system. “I signed up for, like, 10 orgs at the beginning of the year, and I thought I was going to get super involved in all of them. When the spam quarantine happened, they stopped telling me when I got emails from those orgs! I’m not about to sift through every spam quarantine email to find out when the Sixth College Post-Pre-Law Society is going to meet,” says Shana Roberts, a first-year in Marshall College. She reportedly “totally would have looked at the email and gone to the meeting and stuff” if it had not been quarantined.
Other students have also taken issue with the increased emails, specifically disagreeing with the increased fundraising emails. Arizona-native Launa Heykeniz says she does not have the extra funds to contribute. “I already pay out-of-state tuition. You’re already forcing me to pay more and more every year to go to school here, and you expect me to donate? At least wait until students are alumni before spamming them with this shit! I am not just an insignificant speck of dust in the large world of the UCSD email list! I matter!” Heykeniz has elaborated on her opinion in a poetry act titled “You Break Me Worse.” Launa “I am from AZ // but you just call me lazy.” Heykeniz will debut the act at open mic nights across UCSD.
Dan Kaliblotzky is a fourth-year at UCSD. He aspires to find a career in soulful heavy metal Phineas and Ferb covers.
