On most days, I'm never certain what to make of e-mail subject lines.

I get my share of "Jason, what are you doing with your home equity?" and "Get your free online psychic reading now!" messages. And Monday, someone was offering photos from a party I apparently missed.

Point is, I'm flooded with electronic correspondance promising health, money and non-stick cookware to the point that it's almost impossible to discern an e-mail from a professor about a change in the syllabus and one from an online vendor selling discounted prescription drugs and weekend trips to Mexico and Peru ... Indiana. My position as a newspaper editor prompts even more junk.

On the good days, the irrelevant news releases and masked offers to rebuild my credit are minimal. The "delete" button takes a bit of a bruising, and the trash runneth over, but I'm relatively no worse for the wear.

On the bad days, I take a beating — discontent from readers about misquotings and misspellings, criticism of what I do and do not cover, general disgust on the public's part of the news media.

Tuesday looked like a bad day. While one message urging me to send my troubled children to a Wyoming ranch that doubles as a boot camp looked promising, I was more concerned with the "Hoadley case" subject line beneath it.

Ryan Hoadley, you'll remember, was expelled last fall from the University, following a disciplinary conference for his alleged sexual assault of a female Notre Dame student. He sued the University to have the decision overturned on grounds that officials conducted the conference unfairly.

I feared the e-mail contained the worst — condemnation. I hoped that it conferred the best — commendation. It did neither.

It came from a 1940s Notre Dame graduate who wasn't interested in either bashing or praising The Observer's coverage of the lawsuit and alleged assault. He was more concerned with giving me a little perspective.

I was glad to hear it.

"Things like that never happened in our time," he wrote in regards to the relationship Hoadley admitted to having with the alleged victim. "You could be thrown out of school for saying any four-letter word. One guy was caught in the sack in Howard Hall, and the rector told him he `has exactly 25 minutes to clear the campus and to never come back.'"

The writer amused me. He said I probably could hardly imagine a Notre Dame without female students.

Sitting in my air-conditioned, carpeted O'Neill Hall room, it was harder to imagine the scant lodging he described. "We actually never lived in rooms in Brownson. We had lockers in the basement where our clothing was kept ... Across the main basement corridor, we had lavatories where we washed, shaved and brushed our teeth in the morning — or whenever," he wrote.

They retired for the night then at 10 p.m. sharp, he said, in beds surrounded on all four sides with sheets. At one point, he roomed with the school's "hotshot magician."

I thought the writer had worked a little magic himself. He had singlehandedly given my work a little more depth, some history.

Sure, the subject line of his e-mail had fooled me. I had fallen for it as quickly as I had been taken in by the "get your pet in commercials" line.

But it was catchy. And from time to time, we need a line like that to reel us in and in some cases, to pick us up.

Contact Jason McFarley at jmcfarle@nd.edu

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