An accidental email chain formed as a result of one curious alumnus’ ‘reply all’ to an IT Central announcement about the Google Service changes.
When Parsons School of Design alumnus Anna Lathrop responded to an email about The New School’s Google service changes, she made the classic mistake of hitting “reply all.” Little did she know, her response reached the inboxes of hundreds of New School alumni, and not just IT Central. Her small mistake incited a mass email chain of alumni joking and criticizing their alma mater, as responses included everything from photos of pets to complaints about the university.
Lathrop, who is now a part-time faculty member at Parsons School of Design, replied to the email inquiring how the service change would personally affect her as both an alumnus and current faculty member.
“I recently graduated and am now Part Time Faculty – can I confirm that I will be able to keep my google drive?” Lathrop replied.
With most emails sent by The New School, “reply all” is not an option, as your email response often goes directly to the department that sent it. In this case, IT Central made an error when sending the email and forgot to disable the “reply all” feature, resulting in the simple mistake from Lathrop, Merrie Snead, the senior manager of Communications and Community Affairs, wrote in an email to The New School Free Press.
“While it is standard operating procedure to do this, it was missed during the creation of this group due simply to human error,” Snead wrote. “Once we were made aware of the situation, we were able to stop the chain.”
The original email had been sent to New School alumni from the IT department on April 14, and contained a warning about upcoming Google services changes that are set to begin on Nov. 1. These changes will result in alumni losing access to a large array of services including Google Drive, Contacts and Calendar.
“We realize the inconvenience this change may have so we are providing several months of advanced notice so that you can begin planning and migrating your files and digital assets to other services,” the email stated.
Alumni and graduating students who do not prepare for the change will lose the Google files linked to their New School emails in November.
Another email from IT Central was sent to all current New School students on May 9 explaining changes to Google Cloud Storage.
“Google has announced that they will no longer be offering unlimited storage to their higher education customers,” the email stated.
The university made the decision to remove alumni from Google services in order to conserve remaining cloud storage for current students, according to Snead, though, The New School and other higher institutions are in discussion with Google on ways to compromise on the issue.
“The university is disappointed by the changes communicated by Google,” Snead said. “The New School has shared with Google the impact these changes will have on alumni, as well as their concerns.”
While many asked to be removed from the “email spam” chain, others took it as a chance to share photos of their pets and joke around.
“y’all wanna join a bowling club or something? we gotta keep this group going somehow,” one person wrote.
Some used it as an opportunity to share their frustrations with The New School.
“We pay exorbitant tuition rates and then once we graduate The New School kicks us to the curb?” another person wrote.
“Is this because The New School is too cheap? We pay exorbitant tuition rates and then once we graduate The New School kicks us to the curb?” wrote one.
“This school sucks ass,” another wrote.
“Crazy how I landed a job through my high school alumni network rather than the new school,” one replier wrote.
Despite the email coming from a place of forewarning and help for alumni who will lose access to a large array of Google services in the future, many were left frustrated by the decision, as features such as Contacts and Drive are usually free.
“If I learned anything from what was originally my email nightmare scenario unfolding in real-time but turned into something really beautiful, is that an unlimited Google Drive is of real material value for alumni and current students,” Lathrop told the Free Press. “Without question, it should stay.”