On August 21, all active undergraduate and graduate students at the University received a pointed e-mail from studentsystem@virginia.edu. The message instructed students to log into their Student Information System accounts and check for any holds on their records. If any such holds were in place, students could follow specific instructions on the site to resolve the problem. The e-mail further warned that any blocks not resolved by Friday, August 28, would result in the students' enrollment being terminated for all classes.\nClearly this type of message must carry high importance as it requires certain students to take swift action. The Student Systems Project staff determined that this need for high priority was best conveyed with a slightly ominous, all-caps message that read "CLEAR HOLDS OR LOSE CLASSES." After reading the first sentence of the e-mail, it becomes clear that the directive was intended for a general audience and does not necessarily imply that the recipient has an administrative or financial hold. Nevertheless, the nature and ambiguity of the subject line appears to have set off a mild panic among some students. At the very least, it's not a particularly reassuring welcome back for the academic year.\nThe SSP staff had two goals in mind when the e-mail was sent out. The first was simply to ensure that all students with holds corrected them quickly. The second, broader objective was to introduce students to the SIS interface and to highlight its differences from its predecessor, the Integrated Student Information System. As SSP Director Susan Barr explained in a phone interview, "SIS provides significant detail on what holds a student may have, and what should be done to address the holds, in comparison with the information that was available in ISIS. We wanted to be sure that all students were aware of this new feature."\nSSP staff clearly had students' interests at heart when deciding on a format for the message, but the dual intent appears to have obscured their meaning. A simpler solution would have been to send out two separate e-mails - one targeted specifically for students with holds, and one addressed to the student body in general. This capability exists, and in fact Barr pointed out that a second e-mail notice was sent out yesterday only to those students with remaining holds. Such a notice that zeroes in on the students who must take immediate action seems more potent than a general memorandum distributed to everyone. Ultimately, the SSP staff wanted to ensure that all students reviewed their SIS accounts; this was most certainly accomplished. The main problem with the singular approach is that many students needlessly became preoccupied with finding blocks that did not exist, rather than taking the time to review the systematic differences between ISIS and SIS.\nOf course, an entirely capitalized subject line in an e-mail and a slightly muddled message are not terribly threatening things. The alarm among those students in compliance quickly subsided. Still, as one of the first correspondences that first-years received from University administrators, such messages are subject to greater scrutiny. Many observers of e-mail etiquette consider using all-caps to be the written equivalent of shouting at the reader. That is something that all students, faculty and administrators should be mindful of when aiming for professional exchanges with others.
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