Some students, believing that the e-mails would be discontinued if they requested to be taken off the listserv, began responding to all of the e-mail's recipients, and thus, many students received multiple copies of every e-mail sent on the chain.
"The first e-mail was sent out Tuesday night. On Wednesday, I received a few e-mails and responded to them personally, apologizing for the mistake. On Thursday, I woke up and saw post-it notes from my roommates saying things like 'don't worry.' I had a feeling something bad had happened," Kimberlin said.
It was not the massive amounts of e-mail that flooded students' inboxes on Wednesday and Thursday that stands to be remembered, however. It was BC's response.
Since Wednesday night, at least five Facebook groups have been created in response to this cyber-phenomenon. As of Sunday afternoon, the sum of their membership totaled 2,119 BC students.
One group has advertised the sale of T-shirts; the front of the shirts reads, "I was listserved by Genevieve," and the back, "RE: Housing near BC," multiple times.
Another group, called "Genevieve ruined my BlackBerry," has acted as a soundboard for the laments of students who were charged for each e-mail in accordance with their cell phone services' data package.
"As a BlackBerry user, I got all these e-mails on my cell phone. At first I started deleting them, but I'd leave my phone down, come back, and there'd be hundreds of e-mails. I ended up just turning off my data," said Ronald Kenny, A&S '10. "I'll definitely see a difference in my phone bill. This is unfortunate, and I called the help desk and I'm sure these problems will get resolved, but I'm surprised about BC's response. They haven't sent out a tech alert or anything."
After she viewed one of the various groups surfacing on Facebook, Kimberlin opted not to subject herself to the flurry of Internet activity that sprung up around the incident.
"I deactivated my Facebook almost instantly," Kimberlin said. "I would appreciate if people would take themselves out of [the Facebook reaction], and deal with their frustrations in a civilized manner."
2008 Woodie Awards
Kevin Michel
posted 2/11/08 @ 12:58 PM EST
When I graduated in '75, this kind of chaos wasn't even imagined. Now it is a major threat. I have been an IT Manager and business leader for over 25 years, and I have spoken often on the fact that the greatest dangers to the interdependent computer environment is accident, rather than intent. (Continued…)