News Flash: Important Listserv Updates
Colleagues,
Since the inception of the Dean of Students office, with the concurrent realignment of Student Athletics and Recreation, the Dean of Students has maintained the dosathrec listserv to provide an easy method to share information of common interest. Also subscribed to the list were the Black Cultural Center, some folks in Public Affairs, and others with interest in information shared by our offices.
The transition of Student Health and the Psychological and Counseling Center to the Medical Center seemed like a good time to revisit the list, its uses, and what we call it. The result is dospartners@list.vanderbilt.edu.
We’ll use dospartners to share information of interest to our co-curricular colleagues, and of course, to seek volunteers for various and sundry efforts and events. It has been a long time since anyone advertised a fridge for sale, or used the list for some other inappropriate purpose, and we anticipate that this trend of restraint will continue.
In addition to dosstaff, the following listservs are sub-lists of dospartners: athletics-staff, reccenter-staff, bcc-staff, pcc-staff, healthcenter-staff, and commons_staff. In addition, there are some sixteen other persons from Public Affairs, the Parents Office, and other shops about the campus who are subscribed to this new list, most of whom were subscribers to dosathrec.
We have additional lists with which we communicate with students. Official announcements sent from the Dean of Students use Vanderbilt-students, or one of the sub categories such as –undergrads, -seniors, etc. These lists are populated “on the fly,” and students may not unsubscribe from them.
Announcements of a general interest are sent to dosannouncement, or, again, to certain sub categories such as dosundergrads, dosseniors, etc. These lists are populated once a year, and students may unsubscribe or subscribe as they wish.
To ensure that such lists are not over used, some groups have their own “general interest” announcement lists: vpbannouncements (all students), for example, honourcouncilannouncements (undergrads), vsgannouncements (undergrads), oacsannouncements (all students), and so forth.
Offices that might send only one or two announcements a semester, may inquire about using one of the dos lists for their communications. Offices that might send announcements more often than twice a semester may inquire regarding how to get their own lists set up.
One of the most exciting developments (OK, maybe this is only exciting for OHARE staff and listserv nerds), is that after years in the queue, lists for residence halls and houses, residential areas, and campus_residents will actually populate “on the fly,” ending the laborious endeavors required to keep them updated. The technical change that enables this feature is scheduled for July 26, and the work to implement the required queries will begin shortly after that.
We anticipate a few more changes to listservs and communications in the coming weeks, and we’ll keep you posted as those initiatives come to fruition. If you have urgent questions in the meantime, please email me at f.clark.williams at vanderbilt dot edu.
F Clark