Another Embarrasing Ryerson Moment

I got this email today in my Ryerson email account. I don’t know if I’m more embarrassed that a person would ask such a pointless and ridiculous question to the whole program and includes his contact information in the email (it is a very stupid question), or that the department actually sent out this email to all ITM students at Ryerson.

Looking for Ryerson’s most popular student:

My name is Rodney xxxxx and I am a Ryerson student writing an faculty article. I am looking for Ryerson’s most popular student, which means you have over 1,000 friends on Facebook or Twitter or send over 100 text messages every day. If you know anyone like this, feel free to call me on my cell at 416-434-xxxx.

Thanks!

Rodney xxxxx
Fax: (416) 979-xxxx

This is just embarrassing.

Remember, this is Ryerson University, the school that wants to be the new silicon valley, tech start-up, innovation oriented school. Maybe the guy wants to write a smart academic article, but that’s not the tone I get from this message.

Is this the direction to expect that Ryerson’s venture into social media going to go? Forget the whole community and relationship part of it all… “Who’s the person with the most friends? That’s all I really care anything about”

Posted

March 24, 2009

General

Malcolm Bastien

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2 responses to “Another Embarrasing Ryerson Moment”

Rodney Barnes

March 25, 2009

Hi Malcolm,

I'm actually working on a feature story for the Eyeopener; I'm not sure if the "faculty" was thrown in there by the secretary, but it was not in my original email to them.

Without disclosing too much information, the story is not focused on provoking a popularity contest. I am working around a different theme, and need a very connected Ryerson student as part of my story. It seems my original wording was a little inaccurate; this has been corrected in the current edition of the Eyeopener (page 13).

If you know someone who fits this description, feel free to give me a call. You've got my number.

-rb.

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Malcolm Bastien

March 25, 2009

Hey Rodney, thanks for clarifying this. I appreciating you giving some more detail as well for the purpose behind it. I guess you can tell they added "faculty" after the fact as the message say "an faculty article" and not "a faculty article"

Can't say I know someone who fits the criteria of having 1000+ connections. I would hope too that nobody manages to post 100 messages a day as well. You'll have a much easier time finding people with those numbers on Facebook though and not Twitter. I know of only 3 people who currently attend Ryerson with over 500 Twitter followers (myself included) – and each of them would also be skeptical if they were to get an email like this.

I really do hope though that your Eyeopener article turns out to be something informative and useful and is less on the "who has the most friends on Twitter" side. Good luck.

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Another Embarrasing Ryerson Moment

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2 responses to “Another Embarrasing Ryerson Moment”

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