>  A few students have said, I
> want my own Listserv list.  I haven't been approached seriously yet, but
> it will happen any day now.
> My position is that Listserv Lists on campus are for the academic
> community, not for individual use for presenting one's habits, providing
> recreation, or a forum for indivdual tastes, etc., I think they can do
> that on usenet. :-)
 
Realistically, how are mailing lists different in terms of
expression? I'd argue that mailing lists are in some ways more
efficient than newsgroups -- random newsgroups for silly purposes
waste a shared resource (news spool area space), while mailing
lists only waste the disk quotas of people who choose to
subscribe.
 
> Listserv currently runs on a machine that probably
> can't take a lot more stress...but that aside, what are your thoughts
> on this issue and have you had such requests at your institution
> from students and what arguments do you use against the trival use
> of listserv...I could use some about now. :-)
 
Charge a nominal fee -- say $10 per list per semester -- for the
privilege. $10 isn't excessive, but it will give a sense that the
service consumes some amount of resources that aren't free. It
also gives the appearance of giving them what they want while
discouraging the truly frivolous lists...8-).