By Liam Simonelli
Editorial Cartoonist
“Last Chance - 23% off Diploma Frames!” “Give the Gift of Tech!” “Higher Education Skincare is here!” Please! Spare students all of these email advertisements, we have enough emails to sift through.
If you keep as close of an eye on your school email inbox as I do, you probably know what I’m talking about. Those repetitive emails from the College’s Barnes and Noble Bookstore that fill our inboxes weekly. They border on spam and scatter the emails that are actually important.
I did some counting. Since Aug. 1, I have received a total of 57 emails from the College’s Bookstore. Fifty-one of which were advertisements for apparel, textbooks, notebooks, thermoses, laptops and the list goes on.
I certainly expected such at the beginning of the semester. At that point, students are scavenging for used textbooks and perhaps treating themselves to a piece of school apparel. It makes sense that the Bookstore would want to catch the eye of these students with those ads, but pitching to us for weeks and weeks afterward is a bit overwhelming.
The bookstore’s prices are fair at best. Realizing this, I purchased my textbooks from an outside seller this semester. As the first week went by, the system must have gotten wise to this and began inundating me with those, “you may not have ordered your textbooks” emails. The first of these was more than enough, six of them felt endless.
If at this point you’re asking, “why not just block the email address so you won’t receive these emails?” I already tried. In fact, that was the first thing I tried. I immediately found that this was impossible, however, as the College’s domain does not allow students to block senders from any department. So, I’m still comically asking myself, “will it ever end?”
I do realize that our campus bookstore must — underline must — rake in some income to survive. Like any business, it has an overhead: employee wages and supply costs to cover. And after those funds are met, actually make a profit. Advertising helps this goal to be met, but it's my guess that too much advertising can have the opposite effect and can repel an audience.
A solution to all this? Well, it’s as simple as refraining from sending these almost daily advertisements to student inboxes. We get it: sales are here and we don’t want to miss out. Supposing we do want to “miss out,” respect that and give space. Send out an ad once a week, and that should be plenty.
