After talking to Youngstown State University students, Travis Battiest, the Student Government Association’s vice president for university affairs, has taken the initiative to lessen the load sent to students’ emails.
“The concern is that we get a massive amount of emails sent to our YSU accounts,” Battiest said. “The consensus is we want to get this information, but we don’t want to get 15 to 20 emails a day.”
SGA is exploring options for making changes to the MyYSU personal announcement system.
SGA representative Zachary White said he is aware of many students who stress over the amount of YSU emails they receive.
“I’ve talked to students in my college, and it seems like everyone has the same concern,” White said. “There are just so many emails that no one is bothering to read any of them.”
SGA President Elyse Gessler is concerned that students’ ignoring of emails causes a breakdown in campus communication. She cited the many updates regarding financial aid over the summer as an example of important email announcements.
Gessler and Battiest got ideas for possible solutions to the problem during a regional conference of the Ohio Student Government Association because they were able to see what other universities are doing.
“Other Ohio universities really try to centralize all this information in different ways,” Gessler said.
One suggestion posed by SGA is a centralized campus event calendar, which would inform students about upcoming events for the month.
“This is something a lot of other universities struggle with,” Battiest said. “I think a plan involving some sort of calendar which would include events and announcements for an entire week or month would be a very effective solution.”
SGA has taken concerns to campus administration, and Battiest said he’s confident that something can be worked out to benefit everyone at YSU.
“We want to work with the administration to find a way to keep university events accessible to everyone without making people angry,” Battiest said. “This is something that the administration has been exploring, and there are a lot of changes that are being considered.”
