Did you know our uni actually has this mailing list where students from the same discipline get to send stuff to each other?

No doubt it's useful when the lecturers or uni admin staff send out important notices and sometimes happenings or even employment opportunities but most of the times, especially at the beginning of each semester, it's basically a market place for students to hawk or get their textbooks.

It's definitely not funny having 20 new mails everyday of people trying to sell their books but I've used that method for getting my books before so it would be hypocritical of me to condemning it right now.

Point is, a lot of other people are really getting frustrated by all this "junk" mails (it all depends on how u look at it, I definitly don't think they are all junk) . People have been recommending other means of getting your second hand books like textbookexchange.com or the community tab under MyUni.

But seriously, none is as effective as the webmail. You get your books within a day or 2 after posting up the ad. So before they start banning all these people who post book ads on the mailing list , they should really look into the alternatives cause they don't really work as well.

Anyways, back to the mailing list, received this couple days ago and I got so tickled by it I had to post it up.



The words are pretty tiny, so here goes...

It all started when this guy asked

>> Quoting Fei Teng fei.teng@student.adelaide.edu.au
:>> > hi>
> If you gays have the text book for Business Finance, labelled Business
> > Finance> > 9th Edition, contact me via email.

To which, someone responded :

Quoting Richard Hordern-Gibbingsrichard.hordern-gibbings@student.adelaide.edu.au
:> how dare you call me a gay. I take extreme offence to that, and shall be
> forwarding this email to the dean of student welfare

And then another person responded :

S/He was just asking those who are gays.

Shouldn't have responded to that if youare not....

p/s taking offence to that means sexism, and that is illegal...

Of course it didn't just end there and there was this really lengthy retaliation by Richard instead.

It says:

Hey everyone,

Understandably I have been receiving a fair few responses to my email and Ijust thought I should clarify that I did infact realise that Feng had obviously just made a careless mistake with his spelling, and wasn't actuallyimplying anything with his email. I also certainly wouldn't take offence at something so trivial.

My reply was more of a joke aimed at venting my frustration at the seemingly endless supply of spam emails that travel through my and your inboxes.Unfortunately I somehow accidently emailed my response to the entire commerce students mailing list rather than just poor Feng (as intended) and now I'm copping it something fierce haha. I also realise that it is extremely hypocritical to rant about junk emails and then send everyone two myself.

Even so, this year the textbook emails have gone beyond a joke. It needs to stop. I mean seriously, how many students on the commerce mailing list are realistically going to want to purchase a set of chemistry or french textbooks? I am aware as some of you would probably like to point out that it is only a voluntary mailing list however I do not wish to miss out on all of the careers info and genuine commerce emails that we are sent from time totime.

Is their anyway the CSU or University could perhaps look into developing aneasy-to-access book market system? I believe something of the sort exists butI fear most people are either unaware of its existence or do not properly understand how to use it. Also if any of you IT geniuses out there knew of anyway in which I could use my inbox filter settings to limit the number of book emails getting through, I (and I'm sure many others) would love to hear fromyou.

I apologise to Feng and everyone for any trouble or grief my email may havestirred up. No harm or offence intended. Oh and despite everyone's helpful suggestions otherwise, I am certainly neither sexist nor a 'narrow-mindedidiot', and do not 'have issues' with any form of sexual preference. I am tolerant and accepting of all.

I wish you the best of luck and empty inboxes for the remainder of 08.

Regards, Richard

And there were few other replies by other people but not as funny as this.

All these just make checking mail less mundane than you think it'll be.

♥ me for who
I am