October 16, 2007

Were you drunk when you lost it?
Lost and found e-mails

Larry Frisoli | photo editor
lfrisoli@smcvt.edu

In a perfect world, nothing would ever be lost, stolen or forgotten.  None of our keys, cell phones, student ID cards or backpacks would end up in mysterious locations.

In actuality, we tend to lose the things we need. And to get these possessions back, some of the students go to the campus e-mail list.

The result is a new type of lost and found that takes over campus e-mail on a routine basis.  Every morning, reports of missing quilts, cameras and everything in between are shot straight into the inbox of every first year, sophomore, junior and senior with an @smcvt.edu address.  Some are funny, others are sad, but they’re all quickly deleted.

As I feverishly click away at the delete box in the wee hours of the morning, I sometimes get a feeling I’m missing important announcements.  I could go back to the deleted items folder and double check, but I have places to go and people to BS.

My fear is that among the deleted e-mails, a stray click of the mouse has removed an important notice from my inbox—one of those messages with an exclamation point next to it. Some announcement of an upcoming event I might be interested in, perhaps, or a message from a teacher saying, “Bring this to class,” or “Read this for Tuesday,” is gone for good. 

For a few of my professors, e-mail is the primary form of communication to get assignments out to students.  It almost seems out of place to have my crucial notices mixed in among complaints about a "lost" bike that was obviously stolen.

Is this working for you all?  Did the campus help you track down your missing thingamajig? If I could help you find it I would, but I just don't live in the suite where you think you left your backpack full of Busch Light.

You might want to swing by there before you shoot out an e-mail.  That’s what I do.  That's what people have done for thousands of years.  They walk back to their buddy’s mud hut and ask, “Did I leave my Mead next to-  oh yeah! Here it is!”

And if it’s not something you lost, but something that was taken, well, I have to break it to you, some people take things that aren’t theirs on purpose.  Their sticky fingers take, with the intention of keeping the loot or selling it for money.  Those people are called crooks, and they’ve gotten the best of me a couple of times. 

It’s a crappy feeling you get when your iPod is swiped during a party or your bike stolen from your yard.  Once that happens, you are left feeling like you want to do something about it.  That's one example of when police will help you out, instead of writing you a ticket or busting your party when it was just getting good. 

Forgive me, I have gone on a tangent.  The point is that when you send out an e-mail about missing gadgets, you’re asking everyone on campus to help you find it.

I appreciate the humor in some of these e-mails, but it's the sheer volume of them that makes them a nuisance.

Is this the best system we can think of?  What about a good old physical lost and found, or an online message board where you can report things found?  It’s nobody’s fault that this system of sending our lost and found e-mails to the whole student community is customary; it’s been in place as long as I remember.

Whether it’s working or not, it’s important that we consider how relevant our missing knight card is to the rest of the community. 

I’m not a huge fan of e-mail or anything like that—I just have to use it all the time.  All I want is for you to leave me out of your struggle of keeping track of your possessions.