In High-Tech World, Access To Students Still Difficult

Some rarely use e-mail; with friends, it's quicker to instant-message or Facebook or call. Others check e-mail often but don't get to the official messages in their overstuffed inboxes.

Students at Trinity University in the District often ignore their campus e-mail accounts, President Patricia McGuire said. "Mailboxes fill up -- they don't answer anything. At the end of the semester, IT has to go in and empty everything. It's a mess, it's really a mess."

It is a worry, said Betsy Muhlenfeld, president of Sweet Briar College. "It's just ironic that here we are with more gadgets than any of us need and we find it more difficult rather than less so," she said.

Ryan Brier's e-mail box is bulging with announcements from George Washington University. "I try my best to sort through the subject lines, but definitely some e-mails have fallen through the cracks," he said. Like the time he almost missed a deadline and had to scramble to register for his next-semester classes in a couple of hours.

"Most of us are pretty OCD about checking e-mail," said Melissa Minsberg, a senior at GWU, "but whether we read it or not . . ."

Like most students, she has several accounts to keep track of. Although she's constantly deleting random messages from GWU, her campus inbox fills up every couple of weeks, she said, and e-mails get bounced out. "I'll get announcements that I could care less about, or fellowships that don't pertain to me," Minsberg said. Sometimes she opens something quickly, then forgets about it -- like the time she didn't sign up for housing in time.

Campus accounts can be clunky, with not enough storage space or too much spam.

Brier never gives out his GWU e-mail address -- except to people he doesn't really want to hear from.

Some schools still send out mass messages to the campus dorm phones, to voice mails that many students never check or never bothered to set up.

"I don't know anyone who has a land line," said Georgetown University junior Ted Reilly.

But reaching students by cellphone can be tricky, too: Many students consider the numbers private and switch them often. Some school officials talk of "trying to capture cell numbers," conjuring up images of people running around with butterfly nets.

For the most important announcements, such as Virginia Tech's manhunt, schools usually try means such as campus TV and university-wide software. "Oftentimes it takes multiple attempts," said Kara Danner of George Mason University. "There's not one clear way."