There are few things that teenagers despise more than being micromanaged — and it’s pretty clear that USC has missed the memo. From the moment a new student steps on campus, he or she is dragged by orientation leaders through various informational sessions and PSA skits before being put into a dorm under the watchful eyes of an RM. There is nothing wrong with being an orientation leader or RM, of course, but the fact that these positions exist says a lot about how the university perceives its students.
Whether it’s compulsory meal plans, strict quiet hours in the dorms or mandatory room checks, the university is constantly infantilizing its adult students. There are myriad obvious examples of the university’s helicopter parenting, but one of the most out-of-touch and unnecessary has to be the requirement of a mandatory student email account.
For whatever reason, one of the first things an incoming freshman at USC is required to do before starting classes is make a Microsoft Outlook student email account through the university. An email account — a thing that every millennial has had since he or she was 10 years old and that universities seem fully capable of spamming to death, student account or not. This requirement may have been helpful for staying connected back when USC still used a literal face book, but in 2017 it hinders, not helps, communication.
USC manages to make email even more tedious than it already is for most students. By pairing Outlook with Blackboard (the service professors use to share assignments and grades with students), USC creates roundabout and unnecessary steps for communicating with professors. For instance, when a professor sends an email to a student through Blackboard, that student can’t simply hit “Reply” and type a response — unless he wants to get an “undeliverable” error message. Instead, the student must copy the email address from the message and paste it into an entirely new thread to reply.
What’s even more unforgivable about Outlook is how comically poor the spam filter is. In my own main inbox I regularly receive some of the laziest and least covert phishing emails I’ve ever seen, while over in my clutter box I get some of my most important messages. In fact, while looking through the various fraternity and campus event emails in my clutter to write this, I found a highly time-sensitive email from my academic advisor and another notifying me that my account information is about to expire.
You could chalk it up to an isolated coincidence, but I also found that announcements from President Pastides himself go directly to clutter as well — indicating that Outlook just has no idea what it's doing.
What’s even more unfortunate about student email accounts is the fact that they are temporary. A year after graduating, the account is deleted and all the emails, files and contacts are disabled. A record of four years of communication are completely gone. Even the contacts that students save will become void over time as they graduate and as professors switch schools and let their accounts expire. It’s a waste.
It’s not the ‘90s anymore; students don’t need USC to get involved with their email. There is no reason to prefer Outlook over a more functional and user-friendly alternative like Gmail, which I’d wager that most students already have. Making students manage two separate accounts just reinforces a dichotomy between the university and the “real world.”
These types of training wheels only make it more difficult to transition into adulthood without offering any real help in the meantime. It’s necessary to cut back on the micromanaging and leave students some room to breathe and handle things on their own.