Blitz is without a doubt one of the most useful mechanisms we as Dartmouth students have to express ourselves. While we love getting blitzes, you have probably also felt the crushing disappointment of thinking you've received a text only to realize that it's just another blitz from some Gov 10 randos reminding you to participate in their SurveyMonkey or Humanitarian Engineering encouraging you to buy one of their Green Key t-shirts. From surveys to bake sales, every student at Dartmouth has his or her least favorite blitz to receive, and there's no doubt that some groups on campus voice themselves a little too much.
"If I don't know what a group is, and I keep hearing about it, it's annoying," Alex Velaise '15 said. "I probably don't want to go to your show, anyway. When you get more than one email a day from someone and you don't know who they are, you kind of just overlook it."
Other students, however, feel more of an obligation to read all their blitzes (I'm looking at you, '15s) and start to feel a sense of guilt at how little they truly care about all these seemingly ridiculous organizations.
"I hate getting surveys because I never do them, and I keep getting them anyways, so I feel really guilty about it," Jadyn Petterson-Rae '15 complained. "I also get blitzes about things I don't even care about and I'm like, Why do you keep blitzing me?' So I end up deleting almost all of my blitzes."
In coordination with the Hacker Club and the Council on Student Organizations, Will Hix '12 created the campus events listserv, which allows campus groups to easily reach out to thousands of people at a time. Since the system launched in May 2010, about 25 messages are sent to the listserv each day, and about 15 to 20 are approved, according to Hix.
Hix said he often gets frustrated with the amount of unnecessary blitzes people try to send out to campus.
"Rather than just advertising an event that would be relevant to everyone on campus, they just use [the Listerv] to say they lost a jacket, which is ridiculous," he said.
The main culprits of the never-ending blitzes tend to be a cappella groups and frats that blitz out way too early for parties and shows. Many students feel that major organizations should learn to blitz only members in order to reduce the amount of unwanted mail they receive on a daily basis.
"A lot of groups like the eating disorder people and J Street U, which I'm not even a part of, blitz out way too often," Milica Toskovic '15 said. "At this point, I don't even read them. I'm so used to just deleting them. A cappella groups like the [Dodecaphonics] constantly blitz out, but I really don't pay attention to it."
There are others, such as the infamous Sun God, who abused the power of free speech to wreak havoc on the unsuspecting campus. In 2010 Spring term, the Sun God clogged Dartmouth's inboxes with incessant blitzes about his "Love March" around campus.
"The Sun God would always be out in the middle of the Green playing with his light saber," Matt LaBove '13 said. "He lived in an apartment by East Wheelock, and he would always be blasting music at 4 in the morning. You could always hear him coming. It was really annoying."
While it is certainly true that many organizations and people on campus should learn when enough is enough, if we curbed the rights of these people, limiting their blitzes and silencing their voices, many students wouldn't get any mail at all.
"I like having emails," Velaise said, "It makes me feel popular."
And everyone likes to feel popular.
But seriously: Dog Day Players, Dartmouth Asian Organization, [insert class year here] Class Council and all the other smorgasbord of organizations out there make Dartmouth the quirky campus that we are: Reconsider your decision to send out the 20th campus blitz 10 days before your show/event/meeting is actually occurring. On the other hand, without the incessant blitzes, we might lose our campus culture and all the blissful insanity that comes with it. So blitz away, but remember everything in moderation.
