Student Faces Suspension For Spamming Profs

edmicman sends word of a Fox News report about a Michigan State University student who is facing suspension for bulk emailing a number of professors at the university about a proposed change to the school calendar — an e-mail that the university is labeling spam. The article contains links to a copy of the original email, the allegations against the student, and the university's Email Acceptable Use Policy. The student, Kara Spencer, asked a Philadelphia rights organization, FIRE, to get involved. The article quotes the FIRE defense program director: "The fact that MSU is considering punishment of Spencer simply for exercising her right to contact selected faculty members by e-mail shows a disturbing disregard for students' freedom of expression. ... Threatening a member of the student government with suspension for sending relevant, timely e-mails to faculty members is outrageous." Spencer is awaiting the school's judgement after a hearing, and vows to take to the courts if suspended.

Comments

Mass mailing

[DerekJ212]

Clearly, the solution is to mass mail all students at the university for support.

Re:Mass mailing

[Colonel Korn]

The only job of student government in any university is to plan parties. Good for her for trying to do more.

Personally

[Killer Orca]

I like to sign my instructors up for SPAM, but whatever works.

Re:Personally

[Guido del Confuso]

That's funny. I once tracked poop (on purpose) onto my English professor(')s carpet for giving me a 64 (the lowest possible D before an F) because he didn't agree with my position on a paper (which was on a moral issue). He gave me a D because he knew I had put hard work into the document(,) but couldn't agree with my position.

Frankly, I'd give you a D for that paragraph alone.

This is good news...

[Guido del Confuso]

Because it means that we'll finally have an exact legal threshold in terms of number of recipients for an email to be considered spam, regardless of the contents or intent of the email. Zero tolerance policies are a really good idea, because they allow us to deal with violations--now matter how minor--in a uniform manner, and don't permit bureaucrats to allow things like reasonableness or circumstances to muddy the issue.

It's an outrage!

[R2.0]

I mean, without such emails how are the professors to know that their penises are too small?

Re:I read her entire email

[commodoresloat]

It was well written, not off topic, and expressed a reasonable concern

Well then it probably should never be posted to slashdot.

Re:First we need a good definition of spam.

[StikyPad]

I like your idea, and I have forwarded it to 20 of my closest friends with instructions that they do the same.

Re:And that was the correct response, too.

[RingDev]

I believe the appropriate response would have been to politely agree with the netadmin and perform the process he describes.

Then post on Craiglist for someone to assist in an email distribution test.

Let someone else run your spam ;)

-Rick

spamming the spammers

[gomatt]

i get mass emails from students all the time at my school, i just IP relay spam their cell phones and sign their emails up for weather updates every 5 min.

Re:At least she didn't TELL EVERYONE HI

[Ogive17]

Reminds me of the good ole NET SEND command, a few of us would send messages to our TA during our FORTRAN class while he had his screen hooked into the projector. He had no idea where the messages were coming from.. but at least it made the class somewhat entertaining. I guess being able to program doesn't require you to also have some basic networking skills.