MyYSU personal announcements notify the campus community of events and news. But some students say that the emails clutter their inboxes hourly.
“It’s not too bad when they’re spaced out more, but when they send four in an hour, it gets tedious to see how many of them apply to you,” sophomore Brittany Ondrey said.
Ondrey is referring to the rapid succession of emails that are pushed to smartphones and filtered as spam.
Though university officials say students receive an average of three emails daily, students say those emails have a tendency to bury more important messages.
Ondrey forwards her Youngstown State University email to her Gmail account. Many personal announcements are sent out, and important messages from professors are often marked as spam.
“I’d like to see less announcements, or only the ones that apply to me,” she said.
Freshman Pat Joyce also wants to see his inbox less cluttered with personal announcement emails.
“Every time I look in my emails, I have to go pages back to find what I need,” he said.
Travis Battiest, the Student Government Association’s vice president for university affairs, said the SGA continuously receives complaints from students about the numerous emails.
“Students are concerned about what’s going on with the email system,” he said. “We’ve been receiving complaints for the last two to three years.”
Ron Cole, director of university communications, agrees that too many emails are sent out.
“We are in the process of looking into how to resolve this issue,” Cole said. “So many are going out that people are not paying as much attention to them as they should.”
When the portal was launched, email announcements were sent out only when needed by staff members with access to the MyYSU personal announcement system. Cole said university communications is working on a new announcement system.
“We are working on creating a ‘true’ campus calendar,” he said.
Bob Tupaj, website manager and portal administrator, said a campus and public event calendar would eventually appear on the MyYSU Portal homepage.
“We feel that will offset the need for people posting events through the Banner channel,” Tupaj said.
Until the new calendars are created, Tupaj suggested that YSU staff use the announcements channel on the portal rather than email.
Tupaj said the university is working on a new version of the MyYSU Portal, which will include campus and public event calendars, a new email host and mobile device compatibility.