A new Willard Residential College listserv, which made its debut this week, has given students the ability to send e-mails to the entire dorm without administrative monitoring.
The Willard Executive Board considered the students-only listserv following an incident Winter Quarter in which a Willard student ran into trouble because of what he posted on the listserv, former Willard President Claire Wilmoth said.
“We had to make a decision for the security of the residents,” said Wilmoth, a Music sophomore. “It was really meant for the one to two people who aren’t careful about what they put on there.”
The board has spent months working on the new listserv, which runs off of a computer in the Willard computer lab. The original listserv remains intact as a way to send important messages.
“The official listserv is viewed by all,” said Paul Gross, Willard’s computer chairman and a Weinberg freshman. “By having two listservs, you can make one mandatory and the other optional.”
All Willard residents will remain members of the official listserv, to which only a few Willard leaders can post. All residents can post to the new listserv, which has 301 subscribers, Gross said.
“The idea is that if someone doesn’t want to receive 15 to 20 e-mails a day, then they only subscribe to the official one and get the really important information,” Gross said.
But creating the unmonitored listserv was the logical solution to the problem of inappropriate messages, said J.B. Capino, Willard’s assistant master.
“Willard has a very vibrant sort of listserv culture,” he said. “We felt that just shutting (the listserv) down is something that doesn’t go well with the culture at Northwestern.
“We wanted the students to know that we were open to creating channels of free speech. We didn’t want to just restrict the posting privileges,” he said.
Administrators have the right to monitor official university listservs to ensure that listserv owners are complying with standards, according to Information Technology’s listserv policy.
“Lists will be periodically reviewed for activity and continued conformance to the current listserv policies,” the policy reads. “Lists that are inactive or fail to conform to policy will be removed.”
Creating a separate, unmonitored listserv is not an issue that IT would handle, said Tom Board, director of technology support services.
“Policy issues about this sort of thing would start with Student Affairs,” Board said. “I don’t see this as a big deal from a technical angle.”
