You've Got Mail
by Tom Tritton
Right from the start, I know I'm in trouble. The title of this column is hideously ungrammatical. The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania vehicle license plate notwithstanding ("You've got a friend in Pennsylvania"), the purists would surely insist that the correct usage is "You have mail" (or a friend), avoiding the ungainly contraction. My only excuse for using it is popular culture: the digerati will recognize that "you've got mail" is precisely how one is greeted when signing on to America Online and encountering a mailbox with content.
Not to be confused with Tom Hanks in the movie of the same name (You've Got Mail), I thought it might be interesting to reflect on a typical day's mail for your friendly college president. What does it tell us about the times we live in? What do we share with one another through mail? And, what does our use of language imply about our civility towards one another?
It will come as no surprise to you that technology is having a distinct effect on mail by increasing the variety of its forms. Right now, mail at Haverford comes in two flavors: electronic and paper. Fortunately, the College does not yet have that third taste, voice mail. This is coming no doubt, but I fear voice messages will lower the literary quality of our discourse, and possibly shift the plane of civility now common on campus into more direct but glib chatter.
We live in the Information Age, hence we have a lot to say to one another. This observation translates into a spate of e-mail that arrives relentlessly. On a given day the quantity of messages falls somewhere between 30 and 100. About a third of these will be news from various listservs - electronic mailing lists where participants discuss higher education, legal and governmental matters, and current affairs that bear on the mission of the College. Another third of the daily e-mail offering deals with administrative routine: meetings, travel and other calendar matters, reminders of phone calls, and requests to attend various functions and public occasions. These are generally handled without undue hassle. The remaining third is what I call "high content" mail. More on that in a minute.
Meanwhile, what about paper mail (a.k.a. snail mail)? Unlike e-mail, the daily intake of paper mail is measured not in items but in inches (sometimes even in feet). Vast quantities of it are pure junk: advertisements, notices, solicitations for every imaginable item or service, even catalogs. My favorite was an invitation to purchase a jet plane. Sure. Most goes unread into the recycling bin for ultimate (and endless) regeneration as more junk mail. My wife Louise, who is a forest ecologist, wants to do a study of the mass of carbon cycled through the biosphere in this way.
There are also periodicals, some of which are vital (The Chronicle of Higher Education, and Change, as well as those which keep me connected to my professional roots like Science, Nature, and Cancer Research). Some, including hundreds of other college and university magazines and newsletters, are not so vital.
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"I try to respond to every letter or e-mail message, but this can be taxing: I may not always have an answer, and often the correspondent seems to think that the subject is simple and without nuance." |
I try to respond to every letter or e-mail message, but this can be taxing: I may not always have an answer, and often the correspondent seems to think that the subject is simple and without nuance. Sometimes the letter is in a language that I don't read - recently, Finnish (at least I think it was Finnish) and Japanese (judging by the postmark). I also get my share of crank letters (we actually have a file for these) that seem to make no sense or to come from possibly seriously deranged, unknown persons. Often handwritten, sometimes in multiple ink colors or apparently reproduced on ancient copiers for mass mailing to colleges and universities, they condemn or advocate everything from horticultural pesticides to foreign trade agreements. These, too, remain unanswered (most have no return address even if I wished to respond).
I recently had an opportunity to look over some of the correspondence of my predecessor of 100 years ago, Isaac Sharpless. He didn't have e-mail, of course, but he did have a lively paper correspondence handwritten in flowing script. The subjects then were the same as now: student life, academic concerns, the College's finances, the details of a busy life. The language, however, was quite different:
Dear Henry,
I believe that we anticipate spending the time from 9/3 to 9/16 on the Engleside. I shall be much pleased to hear some more of the wisdom of the ages from thy eloquent lips, and incidentally pull in a fish in thy company.
Although "You've got mail" sounds rather crass and hasty next to Isaac's wry effusions, mail&emdash;even e-mail&emdash;is part of the lifeblood of a college presidency. It keeps me connected to the many members of the community, near and far, and allows me to engage in exchanges about important matters. So don't forget that Yours Truly can be reached at ttritton@haverford.edu. Drop me a line some time.