Mass E-mails to Students
The current mass e-mail policy was developed after numerous users of OU’s e-mail system complained about the volume of unsolicited e-mail they were receiving from OU entities. Improvements to both OU’s mass e-mass system (OUMM ) application and most e-mail software now allow recipients more flexibility to filter these types of messages.
Effective April 1, 2009, the following policy will be tested for student mass e-mails for the balance of the spring 2009 semester.
- OUMM e-mail to OU students may be used by registered student organizations* and university departments to communicate about university department or registered student organization events and programs.
- The full-time faculty or staff adviser of the registered student organization may initiate mass e-mails to OU students on behalf of the organization.
- A full-time faculty or staff member of a university department may initiate mass e-mails to OU students on behalf of the university department.
- Absolutely no mass e-mail to OU students may be initiated by any faculty or staff member for personal use.
- Full-time faculty and staff may initiate mass e-mails to students from: http://massmail.ou.edu
- Mass e-mails to faculty and staff are not available through the student system.
- Requests to contact faculty through mass e-mail must be approved by the Senior Vice President and Provost.
- Requests to contact university staff through mass e-mail must be approved by the Vice President for Public Affairs.
GUIDELINES FOR OUMM TO OU STUDENTS:
The following numbered guidelines must be entered manually. These are NOT automated and/or included automatically and are separate from the online submission form.
- All OU mass emails will use the first line of the body/message content to identify who the mass email was sent to, for example "TO: All Students" to "TO: All Graduate Students" or "TO: All Education Juniors". Senders are strongly advised to target the recipients of their message to only send to their specific audience. Senders may select recipients by college and classification.
- All OU mass emails will have a clearly stated subject line, with the prefix "OUMM:" to denote "OU Mass Mail." (Example: "OUMM: UOSA Elections Tomorrow"). The OUMM will automatically be added to the beginning of the subject line.
- The signature information should include the name and department of sender (the full time faculty or staff member sending the message).
- The last line of all mass email messages should include information indicating who approved the mass email. This should be the name of the full-time faculty or staff person who is sending out the OUMM.
- All OUMM will automatically include a Web link to a page that explains how a recipient may filter OUMM messages from his or her Inbox.
FIILTERING E-MAIL FOR OUMM
Some students may not wish to receive OUMM. In order to manage these messages, users should use one of the filtering techniques described at:
http://www.ou.edu/ouit/all/email/massmail.
Students are strongly advised to review OUMM messages before deleting them to avoid deleting important communication from their academic department.
URGENT COMMUNICATION
With the exception of the interim action allowing mass e-mail to OU students only in the cases stipulated above, the current policy to send only urgent, official university communication via mass e-mail will be unchanged.
REVIEW OF POLICY
This test of the OUMM system to OU students will be reviewed at the end of the spring 2009 semester.
*Registered Student Organizations are those organizations registered through Student Life and listed on the Student Life Web site:
http://studentlife.ou.edu/component/option,com_studorg/