News You Can Use in the Age of Face-Booking, Text-Messaging, Blogging, YouTubing, My-Spacing, and Flickring

According to Maya Peraza-Baker '08, a researcher for the VCencyclopedia, Vassar had "telephone service" as early as 1902 – presumably for internal use only, as the connection to the New York Telephone Company wasn't made until 1916. Even after the campus was hooked up to the outside world, there were apparently very few telephones on campus until 1926 when a "modern" system was installed – a switchboard, with operators routing calls in and out from campus offices, dormitories, and faculty houses. It wasn't until 1982 (just a little over 20 years ago!) that members of the campus com- munity were able to direct-dial off-campus calls.

The Internet and cell phones have, of course, radically changed the way we communicate. But in a world where the options are multiplying faster than we can create buzz words to describe them – where face-booking is a verb! – how do we communicate effectively? According to Bret Ingerman, vice president for Computing and Information Services, Vassar's email system processed 25,665,680 messages in December 2006, although only a little more than a million of those made it past the spam filters. Of those messages, Vassar people generated 347,473!

In the Office of College Relations, an important part of our job is to keep the Vassar community informed about what's happening on campus. We'd really like to know how you'd like to get your campus news. Do you want it in print, or online? Do you like to search for it yourself, or do you want it sent to you automatically via email?

Within the next week or so, every member of the Vassar community will receive an email from College Relations with a link to a brief online survey on campus communications. As an incentive to respond, we will enter each person who completes the survey in a drawing for a $20 gift certificate at Barnes and Noble. (College Relations employees are not eligible for the drawing.) A total of 10 gift certificates will be awarded. And if that's not enough? You'll have the satisfaction of knowing that you helped us develop a more effective communications strategy.