Caleb Stephens ‘24
Staff Editor
A Sunny Outlook
Daily a deluge, a torrent, a veritable flood of emails arrives on my metaphorical doorstep. For the past year and a half, I have battled in vain against this plague upon my mind, a clutter in my soul, a pox upon my existence. You too, dear reader, doubtless have experienced this same disaster of which I speak: the endless automated announcement emails from the University of Virginia, clubs, Lexis, Westlaw, and sundry other sources.
Finally, beleaguered students are being given weapons with which to do battle against this flood: the indispensable Outlook Rules. For the uninitiated, Outlook Rules allow one to set up automation to sort emails into folders based on the text, email address, keywords, or any such sorting system one can imagine. While Gmail does have tags and folders, they do not enable auto-sorting in such a manner, only sorting into Gmail’s tab system. Many has been the day when I could not find an email because it disappeared into either promotions or updates, without any apparent rhyme or reason.
To adopt a more casual tone, while Gmail features are more intuitive and straightforward, the lack of customization makes it less user-friendly than Outlook. While Outlook admittedly is complicated and arcane, once the user learns how to use the features, it opens up worlds of possibilities. Automated email sorting is only the beginning of the special features. Much like other Microsoft programs, it does have a steep learning curve (hello there Excel), but once that curve is surmounted, the features quickly won me over. There is a reason that most businesses use Microsoft Outlook, despite its often-outdated interface.
That all said, it is a major inconvenience that we now have two completely different Microsoft accounts, both of which are completely necessary for everyday usage. If these both could be integrated, it would fix many of the problems inherent in trying to remember which of the two Microsoft logins is correct. But hey, at least I won’t have links to addresses attempting to open in Google Maps, only to be told that my UVA Google account is not permitted to use that feature.
Mason Pazhwak ‘23
Events Editor
An Overcast Outlook
While other law students may have reasons why they are either overjoyed or outraged by the switch from Google’s Gmail to Microsoft’s Outlook as our school’s new email platform, I am here to represent the email checker that was neutral, and perhaps even indifferent to the change. When I use my email, I do not set complex email sorting rules, connect external applications, or appreciate having multiple inboxes for different types of emails. All I do is open my inbox in a browser or on my phone, go through and read my emails linearly, move a few important ones I will need to reference later into a simple, intuitive folder hierarchy, delete the others, and get on with my day. Both Gmail and Outlook allow me to do this extraordinarily well. In fact, I can’t think of a single time where I have been unable to get this done on either platform. It is almost as if both were created and continue to be updated by multi-billion-dollar companies that have teams of highly paid designers and engineers who spend hours making user experiences as easy and intuitive as possible. Or even more simply, it is that an email platform doesn’t need that many unique features to be effective, and a whole range of different platforms would be largely interchangeable for most people.
Perhaps my email use is less complicated and well thought out than some, and as a consequence I spend a few extra seconds sorting around like a caveman. Conversely, maybe I do more than others, who just read and delete while I waste my time moving things into my folders. All I can say is either platform works fine for my purposes and likely the purposes of most, and I can’t see how either changes the game for me. The only major difference I have felt so far is having to log into a new website. Now, if I were to bring in other factors external to the email platforms, such as the merits of the full set of Microsoft and Google tools, I am sure I might find something to gripe about. But as far as the emails go, I am going to pull a Switzerland and take a nice seat on the sidelines as other power users duke it out.
Michael Berdan ‘22
Opinions Editor
A Dark and Stormy Outlook
When I was notified that there would be a transition, I was livid. Really? Changing whatever it is you’re changing, right now? In the Year of Our Lord Two Thousand Twenty-Whatever? Surely I wasn’t the only 3L who let out the true soul’s call of all 3Ls: the exasperated sigh that evolves into a belch, groan, and whimper all at once. The way things were prior to the change was just fine, probably, so why does the administration have to go under the hood and start tinkering?
The main issue I have with this change—whatever it is—is that it’s out of step with the Law School’s established pattern of doing the absolute least. Time and again, the Law School has shown its desire to not change, to not make bold course corrections, and to not innovate. When the safety, mental health, and educational benefits of remote learning were staring them in the face, they forced everyone back to the in-person status quo. When Thomas Jefferson’s history of slavery, rape, and violence was brought to light by historians, this university decided to hang tight with their man. When job markets tanked, they continued to plod ahead with tuition increases year after year after year!
I will concede, however, that I do appreciate that in this change, the Law School has stuck with its default modus operandi of not seeking or caring about student input. The change was made, as is tradition, as is normal, without asking its 900-some, tuition-paying students what they think, or what they would prefer. It was made with the apparent assumption that we could not possibly comprehend or opine on the complex dynamics at play in deciding whether to change whatever they changed. We can at least take solace in the fact that the switch was made by an opaque bureaucracy, not by any democratic means. And that makes this change—whatever it was—a little more palatable.
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