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

That brings up an interesting question...

[morgan_greywolf]

Back in the day on Usenet, spam was more than just 'unsolicited commercial e-mail', it was pretty much any post that was cross-posted and off-topic.

So why do so many of us nowadays seem to equate spam with only 'unsolicited commercial e-mail'? In my mind, spam is any piece of unwanted bulk mail, whether it is 'commercial' in nature or not.

I read her entire email

[deft]

it's linked in the news article. It was well written, not off topic, and expressed a reasonable concern about the time period students have to get to know the school apparently. It was not "spam" at all.

It sounds like the professors are more butthurt she got their email addresses than interested in responding to the concern she expressed.

They simply should have redirected her appeal to the right people if it was not appropriate to be sent via that email list. Instead they are being punative.

Re:I read her entire email

[jmyers]

If you also read the complaint, it is alleged that she was instructed the correct way to send the message and refused to do so. The compliant makes it sound like she was in a pissing contest with the network administrator. Not a good person to piss off if you want to send email.

"the student was informed of the proper procedures to follow and flatly refused to obtain proper permissions stating that she would continue to send emails out and demanded that I file charges against her."

sounds like she wanted some publicity to go with her spam.

Re:I read her entire email

[Uberbah]

If you also read the complaint, it is alleged that she was instructed the correct way to send the message and refused to do so. The compliant makes it sound like she was in a pissing contest with the network administrator. Not a good person to piss off if you want to send email.

Yes, many school administrators have the opinion that their department policy is teh law, regardless of what the student may have signed or what the university guidelines actually state.

For example, I knew someone at my university who registered a domain name to his dorm room computer. He got an email from the campus security admin telling him that was against university policy, and to take it down. The only thing the machine was serving was an image of the domain name, but he immediately did as requested. Then the student checked the universities guidelines on network usage, but was unable to find any policy on registering a domain to a campus ip address. The student asked the security admin to point out where this policy was written down. The security admin responded by trying to get the student suspended from the school.

"Selected faculty members"?

[93 Escort Wagon]

She sent what amounted to a form letter to 391 professors. I certainly don't consider this spam. Given the lazy, unthoughtful way she went about this, I also don't consider this anything more than a waste of everbody's time. Sending what amounts to a bulk form letter via email isn't going to influence anyone.

Beyond that, I think it's more problematic that she apparently refuses to comply with university policies once notified about them. Her position basically is "I intend to continue sending out poorly thought out, ineffectual bulk messages to all faculty whenever I see fit." In that context, maybe it does become spam...

At least she didn't TELL EVERYONE HI

[Xcott Craver]

When I was in college, a little-known feature of the mainframe system allowed anyone with an MVS account (every CS major and anyone who took a CS class) to send a bulk instant message to everyone on campus.

Astonishingly, this had the effect of shutting down all administrative offices, from payroll to the registrar to the financial aid office. This was because all the line printers had accounts too, and would choke on an improperly formatted input. Anyone with an account could do this. Of course it would be tied to your name, so in theory you'd want to use someone else's account.

About every couple years a student would learn about the feature and innocently TELL EVERYONE HI without realizing that they were about to enter a dimension consisting entirely of pain. I do not think that even this transgression would result in a suspension---the chair might have you murdered, but no suspension.

First we need a good definition of spam.

[imyy4u3]

Is spam any unsolicited email sent out to 20 or more recipients? If so, this is spam.

Is spam any unsolicited commercial email sent out to 20 or more recipients? If so, this is not spam.

Is spam any unsolicited advertorial email sent out to more than 1 person? If so, this is not spam.

Is spam any unsolicited email sent to more than 1 person? If so, this is spam.

The problem here is we need a legal definition of spam to define what it is. Then once the public knows what spam is, we can prosecute those who send it illegally, and stop wasting our damn time arguing what it is. Personally, I like the definition of any unsolicited email sent to more than 20 people...regardless of the content.

Call the waaaaamulance.

[maillemaker]

>Unless there are policies that say that this isn't allowed. The University has policies for distributing information, and this person ignored those policies.

Well no shit, sherlock. Of course the University is going to try and control the flow of information concerning unpopular policy changes.

Such attempts at control SHOULD BE ignored and thwarted.

The university was trying to pull a fast policy change. This girl alerted everyone to it using the most efficient, straight-forward technique available. I don't care if the university "has policies" for damage contro....er for distributing information. What she did was right.