University officials are calling a mass e-mail students received Monday night a “prank.”

The e-mail, in which the sender posed as Chancellor Herman, was apparently delivered to the “[email protected]” address, which University administrators use for all mass e-mails. Associate Chancellor for Public Affairs Robin Kaler on Monday night called the e-mail a hoax.

Two rounds of this e-mail were sent, the first on Friday night to approximately 2,900 students, said Mike Corn, director of security and privacy for CITES.

The e-mail discourages students from participating in greek rush, claiming that “the greek culture of alcoholism and lack of respect for the community degrades campus life.”

The e-mail is falsely attributed to “GDI Chancellor Richard Herman.”

After information of this e-mail reached CITES, workers compiled a list of people who potentially received it, Corn said. Kaler drafted a response clarifying that it was a prank, and this response was sent to the list of people CITES believed to have received the original e-mail.

The list of recipients does not appear to have any demographic theme, Corn said. He suspects that the sender simply harvested e-mail addresses over a period of time and sent the e-mail to those people.

“We do investigate when things like this do happen,” Corn said. “Obviously it violates a lot of University policies for improper use.”

The preliminary investigation does not indicate any breech in CITES security, or hacking.

“It’s very easy for someone to send an e-mail and make it look like it came from someone else,” Corn said.

The second round of this e-mail was received by students at various times Monday night, but had not been investigated at press time.

“It’s just one of those annoying little pranks people do,” Corn said. “Unfortunately when we track people down, they usually don’t tend to find it so amusing.”

This e-mail coincides with greek rush; sorority rush being scheduled to begin this coming weekend, and fraternity rush currently underway.

“It’s unfortunate,” said Mark Baker, senior in Business and executive vice president of Interfraternity Council. “We’ve made a lot of strides to purge the gap between the greek and non-greek students. This e-mail makes it seem like two different communities, but it’s not like that.”