YOU WON’T BELIEVE WHAT’S INSIDE THIS ARTICLE: The all-school email issue

By Bradley Edington ‘23

Courtesy of Eva Vu-Stern ‘24

Since their beginning, all-school, clickbait emails sent by Catlin Gabel School (CGS) students have been controversial, at points being divisive and harmful to the community.

The concept of clickbaiting entertainment, popularized through the media platform “Youtube” in the late 2000s, entails the use of ridiculous, misleading, and exaggerated titles and/or thumbnails to get viewers to click on the hyperlink to their content. 

In the case of all-school emails sent by CGS students, clickbait titles that feed off of potential school drama are used to get students and faculty to read announcements about clubs, sports, or the Catlin Gabel Student Association (CGSA). 

For example, on September 16, 2022, CGS senior Elsa McDermott sent out an email entitled “***Your Car Has Been Towed***”. This email, which turned out just to be an announcement from the CGSA that Spirit Week was coming up, came off of a series of Upper School discussions about the misuse of the student parking lot and main parking lot.

“I’ve seen it for a while,” says Head of Upper School Aline Garcia-Rubio when asked about the phenomenon. “Students have always used email to try to communicate with their community.” 

Students who do send out all-school emails say they find use in having clickbait titles. 

“People only check their email if the subject is interesting,” says CGS senior and Diversity Inclusivity Coordinator Niah Sei. “I try not to send too many because, to be honest, I don’t think people really care about them, but when I do, I make their subject exciting.”

To some extent, these emails serve their purpose. “I think they are funny,” says CGS senior Mazli Mehr. “The ones about getting in trouble do get me to click on them faster than I would otherwise.” 

“Even though they may be annoying, they get me to click on them,” says CGS freshman Violet Daly. “So, I think they should just get to the point in the title of the email.”

This sentiment is also shared by some of the faculty. “I don’t mind it,” says Garcia-Rubio. “The vast majority of the time I do find humor in them. I will literally chuckle when reading them… When the CGSA sends something out, that feels very good.”

Despite the humor, awareness of events, and community building that these emails have the potential to bring, misleading titles can sometimes have the opposite effect. The main criticisms of the all-school, clickbait emails are that they are annoying, cause people unnecessary worry, and can result in safety issues.

“I don’t like them,” CGS sophomore Finn Hough. “Why do they all have the title ‘emergency’ or ‘important’ when it’s obvious that they're not? It’s very frustrating.”

“I think they are pointless,” says CGS junior Owen Chenoweth when asked about the impact of these emails. “I don't really care about a lot of the Catlin sports or clubs. If I do, I'll probably hear about it from my friends, instead of an email.”

Chenoweth also expressed his frustration with the worrying titles of all-school emails. In response to an email sent out by Sei with the subject line “The JC [Judicial Council] has requested your presence.” 

“I was kind of scared for a minute,” said Chenoweth. “However, when I saw it was just about a women’s basketball open gym, I became fairly upset. She had sent out an all-school email that only applied to a finite part of the Upper School.”

Chenoweth emailed Sei directly back, saying “You're not funny. Stop.”

In response, Sei said “Unless you're a woman hooper, I’m not sure how this email concerns you. Thanks for the input. I’ll keep that in mind next time. If you done anything bad that the JC would request your presence, that's on you.” Though the original email was meant to spread awareness of a fun opportunity and build community, the email’s clickbait title had the opposite result for Chenoweth, which led to an easily avoidable disagreement.

Critics have also identified safety issues that can sometimes accompany clickbait emails. “They might affect the validity of more important emails,” says CGS senior Lottie Malkmus. “Next time there is something truly urgent or important, people may not click on the email and look.”
This issue has played out a couple of times in the past. For example, in October 2021, CGS senior Grace Mueller sent out an email titled “*EMERGENCY MUST READ*” which announced an upcoming women's soccer game that honored the seniors on the team. 

In response, Garcia-Rubio sent out an email with the title “Not an: *EMERGENCY* please read.” In it, she said “Let’s not use an emergency subject line unless there truly is an emergent issue that needs everyone’s attention. We need to reserve that for times that require immediate and full attention.”

This criticism connects to another problem that all-school emails bring: too many emails. Garcia-Rubio says that “Students, for years, have been telling me that their inbox is unmanageable and that they get too many emails. We have these policies of reducing the number of emails because students have asked for them.”

One of these policies was announced in an email from former Dean of Students Brandon Woods in 2018.

“As you know, we are trying to centralize announcements, with the hope of reducing the announcements made during community time and mass emails,” said Woods. “From this point forward, if you have an announcement, please email it directly to Mary.”

This announcement, which laid out the policy that students should send all their announcements to the former Upper School Administrative Assistant, Mary Medley, seems to have been completely abandoned. This may be a result of when this email was sent out. The entire current Upper School student population had not entered the Upper School yet and, thus, did not receive the email. 

Garcia-Rubio also mentioned that she feels that the overuse of email manifests most often when students chain-reply to all-school emails.

An instance of this is when former CGSA Secretary Aiden Sheeran-Hahnel sent out an email titled “CG SPIRIT WEEK AND HOMECOMING DANCE!!!” in September 2021. The email included information about spirit week. In the coming day, there were 10 replies to the email from students, jokingly criticizing or suggesting new ideas for what the spirit's weekdays could be. 

This email chain was shut down by Dean of Students John Harnetiaux. “While I appreciate the banter and excitement from this thread, Aidan is correct that we need to interrupt this; I ask there are no emails sent to this email thread. These class lists are for specific and relevant announcements only.”

However, Harnetiaux did not take up an issue with how email chains cluttered up people's inboxes when students and faculty replied-all to an email from teacher Dave Whitson with the subject line “A statement about my future at CGS.” 

This email —which was just an announcement about Global Education’s upcoming France Pilgrimage, rather than a statement about Whitson’s position at CGS or retirement, as the title implied,— actually resulted in a reply from Harnetiaux. In his reply, Harnetiaux played into the clickbait title, congratulating Whitson on what was to come for him, and, by replying, validating the email chain. 

The single solution to the all-school email issue which students and faculty most often proposed was to incorporate most announcements into the bulletin while continuing to use email for important information. 

That being said, some individuals have a similar negative attitude toward the bulletin as they do all-school emails. When asked where announcements should be placed, Chenoweth said “maybe put them in the daily bulletin. Like, no one reads that, but no one's going to read your stupid emails anyways.”