MEMO: E-mail Procedures & Subject Lines
From Sreenath Sreenivasan, Dean of Students
Re: E-mail lists and subject lines
The high volume of e-mail messages we send out means that at some point in the fall, some students will start tuning out some messages and miss important items. This is particularly important now that we have several cohorts in the building. (As the #1 e-mail sender in the school, I believe I am especially qualified to speak to the issues of people tuning out particular senders.)
It is crucial that we carefully follow the guidelines below in order to have clarity in our subject lines and our communications. We deliberately control the number of people who are allowed to post to these lists, because we have seen problems in the past with inappropriate messages going out to large groups of students. If you would like to be a sender of information on any of these lists and aren’t set up already to do so, please write to me explaining why you need to be on this. Or if you have a message to be sent out, just send that along and we will send it out.
First, a reminder of the various lists we have for students.
[J_school] = the entire universe of students - including all the full-time MS,
MA, PT students, Knight-Bagehots, PhDs, etc.
[PTclass] = all current PT students, no matter when they graduate.
[MAclass] = all current MA students.
[PhD] = all PhD students.
[INTL] = all current international students.
-
SUBJECT LINES: Here are the subject line headers we should be using.
ACADEMICS: this covers registration, how to apply for classes, changes in
instructors, change in class meeting times, etc.
LOST/FOUND: sent by Robert MacDonald only, along with a reminder that we have a
Lost & Found box in the Mailroom; use sparingly.
CAREERS: for all job-related info; posted by Ernest Sotomayor and his team.
MEMO: for major memos only - eg, Spring Letter from David Klatell or
registration information; use sparingly.
EVENT: this signals a J-School event — anything from lectures to panels to the
holiday party to the First Amendment Breakfasts to special speakers to
Breakfast with the Deans to the duPont events. If it’s a specific speaker,
please list the affiliation in the subject line and the date, if possible.
CAMPUS EVENT: for events not sponsored by the J-School but that we think our
students might be interested in such as the park clean up, university blood
drive, programs at SIPA, SAJA events, etc.
NY EVENT: for events outside the campus; use sparingly.
LIBRARY: for library related items; posted by Deborah Wassertzug.
SPJ: for SPJ items; posted by Prof. June Cross, the faculty adviser and Akisa Omulepu, class president and Rubina Madan, pulblicity director.
FINANCIAL AID: for scholarship and financial aid info; posted by Robert
MacDonald.
LEDE: for issues of The Lede; posted by Barbara Fasciani
REQUEST: for reqests of various kinds — volunteers, book donations, etc.
OFFER: for offers of tickets, unscheduled classes, media tours, etc.
ARTICLE: for articles that students should read; use sparingly.
GRADUATION: this covers all commencement related topics and memos; sent by
Melanie Huff & Barbara Fasciani.
There may be other key words that we decide we need and we can add those later.
There will still be times when you send a message and think none of these key
words are appropriate. In those cases, just put in your own subject.
If your message is intended only for the M.S. students and is going out to the
main [J_School] list, please put a ” - MS students” at the end of the subject
line.
When you type in the subject using key words, it should look like this:
ACADEMICS: Law Exam - MS students
or
EVENT: Lecture by David Remnick, The New Yorker, on Tues, 9/19
Thanks for your cooperation on this.
Sreenath Sreenivasan
Dean of Students
