All hell broke loose at Oakland University sometime around 8:45 p.m. How it happened, we may never know. (Sure, we may hear something within 24 hours, but that might as well be a lifetime on the Internet.)

It started innocently enough. Someone sent out a survey for their Rhetoric 160 class. From then on, chaos reigned.

Most people that have dealt with email for any length of time knows the perils of the "Reply All" button. It's cemented in your head the first time you accidentally send an email to the larger thread for whom the message was not necessarily intended.

Apparently someone at OU missed the message. For the second time in my undergraduate career, someone has decided, intentionally or otherwise, to take part in a reply all social experiment.

Most will be annoyed by this, but the first instinct of some to tell people to stop responding will do no good. It just encourages those that take some sort of pleasure in blowing up a perfectly sanitary inbox into an experiment in chaos theory.

Rather than panic, I say we take this opportunity to institute rules of order for our little email community. Let's call ourselves "E-Campus" for the sake of argument. Here's what I propose:

Every email must begin with a picture of Greg Kampe. This will serve as a symbol sort of like the conch shell from Lord of the Flies. If the picture is there, you can talk.
To continue with the basketball theme, this next policy is the "Travis Bader rule." Each email must consist of at least three coherent, preferably related, sentences. This will keep people from sending things like "I like turtles." We are in college people. Let's bring up the level of discussion.
Just because you like chain emails doesn't mean everyone else does. They are banned.

We may not like this whole listserv email thing, but as long as we have it, we may as well enjoy insightful discussion.

writergraham.com