Paul Huang
MSCI Department
Virginia Tech
pahuang@vt.edu

E-MAIL: A New Form of Communication Brings With it Some New Issues

Messages regularly travel between computer to computer at workplaces and college campuses across the country: Ebonics 101. Why beer is better than women. Why golf is like a good woman. E-mails are sent daily between peers or even strangers. For many students and employees, e-mail has evolved into casual conversation complete with jokes and gossip (Singletary). Along with this new form of conversation has come new forms of harassment and reborn prejudices as well. Employers, employees, students, schools, and society must now deal with the issues that e-mail has brought along with it.

The Problems We Face:

Electronic mail has grown dramatically as people fire off e-mail messages to each other as lighthearted chat. No first draft, no spell checks, just free-flowing private conversation. Or is it private? Company e-mail or school e-mail is not private and each time you push the 'send' button, remember that one day you might have to explain it to a judge, a manager, or an administrator (Singletary). What's worse is that even though some know it's not private, they assume that once they have read it they can delete it and no one will be the wiser. This assumption is not true however, most deleted messages can be retrieved from a computer's electromagnetic memory. A new wave of litigation is being formed in which employees and students produce e-mail evidence of sex, race, or age discrimination and/or harassment. There are even agencies that do nothing but gain access to a companies' computer system and rummage around for these pieces of e-mail evidence. Beware, for with the great advantages that have come with e-mail, there are problems that must be solved as well.

INAPPROPRIATE JOKES AND HARASSMENT VIA E-MAIL

Jokes, supposedly left behind in the era of political incorrectness, and harassment, which had lost an easy means of communication, have been brought back by e-mail. This new technology has made it more likely that inappropriate jokes will spread and harassment cases will rise, since it seems impersonal and people believe they will not be caught. Messages written on company or school e-mail systems are considered company/school property and should not be used for religious, political, or personal purposes.

What Can Happen:

If inappropriate messages end up in the hands for whom they were not intended, then serious problems may occur. For example, in the past five months, three major US corporations - R.R. Donnelly & Sons Co., Morgan Stanley & Co. and Citicorp's Citibank - have been sued by black employees alleging discrimination as a result of messages sent via e-mail. At Chevron Corp., a settlement for $2.2 million in a sexual-harassment lawsuit came about because an e-mail was passed around in the company e-mail titled, "Why Beer is Better Than Women" (Rapoport). On college campuses, cases have become popular as well because college students are heavy users of e-mail. At Cornell, a suit came about because several students forwarded around an e-mail which listed the, "Top 75 Reasons Why Women Should Not have Freedom of Speech." MIT handles about 50 harassment cases involving e-mail per year (Harmon). These cases illustrate the increasing number of e-mail harassment cases as well as their severity.

E-MAIL LAW AND WHAT THE GOVERNMENT SUGGESTS

E-mail law is racing to catch up with technology but it is still behind. The laws and regulations that do exist have shown to allow e-mail as admissible evidence. The courts seem to also recognize e-mail as company or school property. Salt Lake City attorney Brent Johnson says, "People send e-mail without thinking, but that is not how courts see it" (Carricaburu). Many important new precedents are being set, especially on college campuses where e-mail accounts are given free, and the use of e-mail has become almost an everyday task. Yet until e-mail law is well established, the government has suggested some precautionary measures to protect schools, companies, and society.

E-mail Policies:

What the government suggests is for companies and schools to create their own policies to protect themselves from liability. Companies and schools should examine the issue of e-mail policies very carefully. Some questions they should consider include: How will deleted e-mail be stored and for how long? Who will monitor e-mail use, and to what extent are they authorized? How should damaging information contained in e-mail be disclosed? What is the corporate/school culture and how does the policy fit into it? And what are the benefits and harms of the policy, including potential harm to employee/student morale (Carricaburu)? After these questions have been answered a decision must be made on whether or not to have employees/students individually sign the policy or to have the policies merely publicized throughout the company/school. No matter which way companies and schools choose to communicate their policies, the key is that each and every employee and student must be aware of those policies. The Society for Human Resource Management has provided a sample form for employees to sign that acknowledges a company's e-mail policy. In part, it says, "I am aware that the company reserves and will exercise the right to review, audit, intercept, access and disclose all matters on the company's E-mail systems at any time, with or without employee notice, and that such access may occur during or after working hours."

Large companies and several universities have already started adopting these policies. Take Kmart for example who's policy reads, "Misuse of the E-mail system could result in denial of access to the Kmart computing environment, or dismissal,..." The company continues by saying that, 'electronic mail sent from Kmart travels on Kmart's electronic stationery' and is thus the same as if were sent on Kmart's letterhead. Every employee is introduced to this policy at orientation. The University or Utah, Virginia Tech, MIT, and Cornell along with many other schools' policies have been established and set for many years. The problem with these schools is that students are not exposed or oriented to these policies, but as cases arise awareness will as well. In contrast to these policies, Apple Computer's has had an explicit policy of not monitoring employee e-mail for years (Samuels). They believe it shows lack of trust and lowers employee moral. Companies and schools should have a policy that fits their culture and protects both themselves and their employees. Yet having a policy is only the first step, it is the companies' and schools' responsibility to make each user of their systems aware of these policies.

ANONYMITY AND FORGERY: How do we know who's to blame?

One problem that can occur with e-mail is the problem of anonymity or forgery. What if someone sends harassing or discriminating e-mails under another person's name, or without a name at all? With today's technology e-mails can be traced back to their source. It is easy, however, to make e-mail messages untraceable as well. Let us say a message is traced back to the sender. How do you know that the sender actually sent the message or if someone accessed the users computer, password, or system without authorization? With a growing concern toward e-mail harassment and discrimination, finding the source of these messages is a large concern as well so that innocent people will not be put to blame and the true culprits will.

Forgery Cases:

In recent news, several highly publicized cases have showed the damaging effects of forged harassment e-mails. Lawrence Ellison, founder and CEO of the world's second largest software company, was accused of sexually harassing his ex-girlfriend and former Oracle employee Adelyn Lee. Lee had claimed that Ellison had fired her because she stopped having sex with him. Lee produced e-mail evidence which said that she was to be terminated. Along with this e-mail she produced many old e-mails of which her and Ellison had communicated about their relationship. Ellison settled out of court with her for $100,000 in 1993. Later it was found that Lee had forged the e-mail concerning her termination. Lee eventually was taken to court and found guilty of creating false e-mail and lying under oath (Vasquez). Now imagine if you were expelled for school and put in jail for 6 months because you were accused of harassing someone over e-mail. This is exactly what happened to Jinsong Hu, 26, at CalTech. Jiajun Wen, Hu's former girlfriend, accused him of sending her harassing e-mails. Not knowing what to do, CalTech decided to expel Hu and Wen decided to take Hu to court. It turned out that three of the four e-mails in question were forged. Hu was acquitted of all charges but remains expelled from CalTech (Harmon). In colleges, the main concern over e-mail harassment has come by the means of romantic troubles and forged e-mails intended as jokes or romantic ploys, which have made matters even harder to control. Given the ease and relative anonymity with which e-mail can be sent, university officials and company administrators worry that it's an especially potent tool for harassment. But at the same time, it's often possible for e-mail to be manipulated to look as though it has been sent by someone else so treating e-mail as evidence must be used with considerable caution.

E-MAIL HARASSMENT: Why is it Becoming a Problem?

Why is it that e-mail seems to be used more and more as a way of expression in harassment cases? Kathleen McMahon, assistant dean of students at UCLA says, "I'm amazed with the amount of sexual harassment among students and the use of e-mail to express it." She continues by saying, "When relationships go bad, instead of stalking the student they sent 10 e-mail messages saying 'I can't believe you won't go out with me'" (Harmon). It seems that people don't seem to think there is anything wrong with writing 10 e-mails opposed to calling 10 times on the phone. However, harassment is harassment no matter what form of communication it comes in. Some reasons e-mail is prevalent in harassment cases is that there is a mental barrier people still hold about e-mail. The kinds of inappropriate jokes that used to be swapped in conversations at the water cooler or school yard, and then vanished, are now being told in e-mail messages and preserved on hard drives. "Where people get into trouble is where they confuse e-mail with a conversation," said Robert Rosell of Quality Media Resources. "They say things in e-mail they would never say face-to-face to a person. That's what's leading a lot of people into trouble" (Rapoport). Because people are typing messages onto a computer screen they detach themselves and write things that they would probably never dare to say directly to a person. E-mail isn't treated as a verbal conversation by many, as they feel that they have a shield to hide behind when they write a message rather than say it. E-mail is also perceived as private and closed to only the sender and receiver. However, this is not true. People seem to detach emotions from e-mail as it is a quick free-flowing form of communication unlike a verbal exchange of words with which emotions and body language often speak as loudly or louder than the words. This is why it is also much easier to have messages misinterpreted if written then spoken. These are reasons why e-mail has become a popular form of harassment. Until people treat e-mail as if it were a face-to-face conversation and learn more about how to communicate using this new form of communication, what is appropriate, and what is not, harassment in schools, homes, and workplaces will continue taking the form of electronic mail.

E-mail's Revitalization of Political Incorrectness:

A trend toward political correctness and the decline in racism, sexism, and other prejudices in the past several years has sent the amount of inappropriate jokes and comments to a minimum. E-mail has brought back a median for those inappropriate jokes and comments though. Through the perception of e-mail being private along with the lack of physical contacts of conversation, these jokes and comments that have been suppressed or forgotten in the years past have made a come back, a come back on computer screens. Tensions will increase unless people are educated and treat e-mail as they would face-to-face conversation.

E-MAIL HARASSMENT: Internet Impact on the Present and the Future

E-mail is quickly becoming a common form of communication in the world and as it brings with it many advantages, it also brings with it several problems. E-mail is unlike face-to-face conversation in that it is detached, less emotional, shielded, perceived as private, and can be misinterpreted easily. Because e-mail is a different , new form of communication, people must learn how to communicate with it which will take time. E-mail users must realize that e-mail must be treated like face-to-face conversation, they must realize that it is not private, they must understand how to interpret messages correctly, they must know that there are consequences to misusing e-mail, and they must understand when and what is appropriate over e-mail. Eventually, over time, e-mail will be understood more clearly by it's users and these problems will become much less of a concern. Unfortunately, e-mail as a new form of communication has brought back discriminating and prejudiced jokes along with harassing and offensive messages which were once suppressed. This is a huge step back for society as we see that prejudice is still around and will be there unless we individually decide to stop it. As harassment cases and discrimination cases related to e-mail use become more and more popular, e-mail users around the world will learn to use e-mail more appropriately. E-mail policies are the best defense for companies and schools learning to adapt to this phenomenon. E-mail can be damaging evidence in any court case but because of the ease of forgery and the capability of anonymity it should also be cautiously used as evidence. Issues of privacy and encryption will be important in dealing with these policies and with the use of e-mail messages as evidence. E-mail is a wonderful form of communication that we can all use to make our lives easier. But consider the risks of using e-mail as well, for it may come back to haunt you and hurt our society as well.

LINKAGES AND REFERENCES

Daniel Vasquez, "Spurned Girlfriend of Oracle CEO Guilty of Perjury,"
San Jose Mercury 29 Jan. 1997.
http://www.sjmercury.com/news/local/lee0128.htm

Michael Rapoport, "E-mail Increasingly is at Center of Worker Suits
Against Companies," The News-Times 20 Feb. 1997.
http://www.newstimes.com/archive/feb2097/cpf.htm

Patrice Duggan Samuels, "Earning it; Who's reading your e-mail? Maybe
your boss," The New York Times 12 May 1996, late ed..
http://cs.nyu.edu/ms_students/cera7013/class/privacy.htm

Lisa Carricaburu, "E-mail may be used against you, "
The Salt Lake Tribune 9 Aug. 1996.
http://www.sltrib.com/96/aug/09/tci/00213913.htm

Amy Harmon, "Student's Expulsion Over E-mail Use Raises Concern,"
Los Angeles Times 15 Nov. 1995, home ed..
http://www.caltech.edu/~media/times.html

Michelle Singletary, "E-mail Jokes: Punchlines Can Carry a Price,"
The Washington Post 18 March 1997, sec. A:1.