Late Wednesday night, my friend online had the away message
“water water everywhere and not a drop to drink.”
She’s a lifeguard with late-night training, and considering
her earlier away messages, I just assumed that was what she was
referring to.
It wasn’t until Thursday afternoon that I found out what
she was talking about ““ after three classes and lunch, when I
finally came out of my midterm cave and talked to some friends.
Good communication is one of the keys to a fruitful
relationship. And I expect the most out of my relationship with
UCLA. So when I found out about the water issue almost a full day
after the fact, I felt like I had slipped through the cracks of a
huge system that I like to call home.
The water turned out uncontaminated in the end, and the boiling
measures only precautionary. I was safe from possible stomach
discomfort. In retrospect, it actually seems a little silly to have
worried so much. But I realize my anxiety came more from a leaky
information system than from a leaky pipe.
I have to appreciate that at a sprawling, decentralized campus
such as UCLA, the effort to reach everyone is quite complicated.
According to Assistant Vice Chancellor of University Communications
Lawrence Lokman, e-mail is “by no means the primary method
which we would rely on to communicate to the campus
community.” It is only a support means, along with other
information networks that are used. “The emergency mass
e-mailing system is meant to get the message out faster,” he
said, but other means ensure that everyone will be informed.
But, somehow, I was not informed.
The e-mailing system, it turns out, works in a tree-structure
method. The university, to save time, sends out one e-mail to each
campus e-mail system (consider all the different servers some
professors are on, like humnet.ucla.edu).
That server is then required to send the e-mail to all its
members. With this method, using third-party e-mail services such
as Yahoo! and Hotmail becomes problematic because they can mistake
the mail as spam and filter it out.
Don Worth, director of administrative information systems,
mentioned a move toward centralizing the e-mail system in order to
keep students better informed. The problem is not gathering all the
e-mail addresses ““ 99 percent of students have registered an
e-mail with Murphy Hall ““ the problem lies in that the
majority are not Bruin Online accounts.
Worth said that the university was looking at getting
consistency in e-mail addresses for students, which would involve
every student using the UCLA e-mail system.
I think that’s a smart move. It seems the most natural
thing to use the UCLA e-mail system for is important UCLA-related
e-mails. I myself have three e-mail addresses that I try to keep
separate ““ one for personal use, one for school use and one
for The Bruin.
If all students checked their official UCLA e-mail accounts,
information dissemination would be much more reliable.
But my Bruin Online e-mail address is the official address I
have listed on URSA, and I did not get the emergency e-mail
mentioned above. I’m not the only one ““ I know a good
number of people who did not get the e-mail.
Considering that e-mail is only a support method of information
communication, I have to give credit where credit is due ““
the Department of Water and Power signs were everywhere.
But they were missing one vital piece of information: Who does
this affect? I stood reading the sign, drinking my tap-filled water
bottle, wondering how many people actually drink from on-campus
water fountains.
It would have seemed most natural to me to get a message from
MyUCLA. When speaking with Director of College Information Services
Eric Splaver, he agreed. However, no one put in a request to post a
notice about the water, and he said it slipped his mind to add it
himself. He said he realized that if he lived in the area he might
have found it more urgent.
I am glad for the precautionary measures that were taken.
Securing the campus in two-and-a-half hours is quite a feat. And
the information turned out to be there ““ if you looked for
it. Still, the initial announcement to the students was
lacking.
Getting the students to all use Bruin Online does not seem
unreasonable. Requesting posts on MyUCLA would also be helpful (it
was very helpful, for example, when the posting on MyUCLA informed
me that the water was finally declared safe to use and drink).
If they can fix a major water pipe leak, then we can fix our
information leak and improve UCLA as a whole.
Tell Hashem what you think of her communication skills at
nhashem@media.ucla.edu.