OpenList Arrives

E-mail lists—love them or hate them, any student the least bit involved in an on-campus group most likely relies on them. And there have undoubtedly been times when students wish to get together and make their own list, be it for a study group, an unofficial student group, an entryway, or a blocking group. Thanks to the Harvard Computing Society (HCS), now anyone can create an e-mail list. We applaud HCS for taking the initiative to open mailing lists to the entire student body.

The benefits of the new system are clear. No longer will a technologically clueless student have to figure out how to set up groups in Pine, Webmail, or whatever other e-mail client he or she may use. No longer will we forget to send something to someone, leaving them off of an ad hoc e-mail list. No longer will communicating be unreasonably difficult if a student group is unofficial or trying to get off the ground and gain official status. Everything is now in one nice, easy package. A student simply goes to the HCS webpage (www.hcs.harvard.edu) and clicks on “make one” next to “mailing lists.” Voila, interconnection.

The downsides, on the other hand, are minimal. The most obvious is technical support. We hope that the HCS provides its own system so that undergraduate User Assistants (UAs) are not plagued with a deluge of questions about mailing lists. UAs are already burdened with painfully annoying questions from students who’ve forgotten to plug in their PC; they shouldn’t have to answer questions about the HCS mailing lists, which they are technically not in charge of. The other obvious downside is that people will probably be getting more unwanted e-mail. But that can be solved by self-restraint—simply be wary of signing up for 100 mailing lists.

Quite simply, there was no good reason to restrict mailing lists to unofficial groups before. HCS members have said that the technical limitations vanished long ago, but that they thought the administration would not allow anyone but official groups to have mailing lists. This is something administrators should have addressed long ago, as it is an easy and painless way to improve and facilitate student interaction.

We are encouraged by these recent developments, and hope that they are just one of the many student life improvements that HCS will make in the future.