There are people on this campus who care about sports. I am not one of these people.
It’s a difference of opinion, and I’m not trying to convince people that they should not like sports. If I’m in a group and they want to talk about sports, I’ll happily stare into the distance or check my phone for a minute.
However, when sports are forced upon me, I become upset.
I’m sure that most students have noticed that we receive emails from Associate Athletic Director because we are a part of the ETSU Students Listserve. All of these emails pertain to sports announcements or sporting events.
While I appreciate his enthusiasm and passion for ETSU sports, I become irrationally angry when I see that I have received a new email and it’s not a reply from one of my thesis readers but an email about sports.
Additionally, I never told anyone that I was interested in receiving emails about sports. I did not sign up for these emails and there is no way to unsubscribe from them.
A confession: When the university was still using Goldmail (which relied on Google’s Gmail platform), I would mark emails regarding sports as spam for these reasons.
In my frustration, I reached out to the ITS Help Desk a few weeks ago. They could not offer any advice on unsubscribing from emails from the Associate Athletic Director. They advised me to contact the Office of the Registrar for advice.
Another confession: When the university was transitioning away from Goldmail, I tried to block the Director so that I would no longer receive these emails. However, this didn’t just stop emails from this Director but also all emails that were directed to the ETSU Students Listserve.
But it’s not just the emails regarding sports that are sent, unbidden, to students. Before I sat down to write this article, I heard from other students that they had received emails from the campus bookstore without having given that entity their email address.
It’s no secret that many students, myself included, do not use the campus bookstore. I recall making a single purchase there during my first year at ETSU. This purchase was for a basic, standard function calculator (Walmart.com’s price: $2.99) and my total was over $7.
No one should be reminded of that kind of trauma, so I completely understand why a student would loathe receiving emails from this business.
While I understand that the university could reasonably assume that students would enjoy receiving emails regarding ETSU sports or sales at the campus bookstore, the frustration that I have heard from other students and that I experience because of these emails is evidence that these emails should function on an opt-in system and should have a simple opt-out process.
