One thousand, three hundred and eighty-two seniors found a surprise in their e-mail inboxes today: an unsolicited message recruiting students to work for Dean and Company, a Washington-based consulting firm.

According to Melissa K. McSherry '94, an associate at the firm who is in charge of recruting at Harvard, said an employee at the firm who recently graduated from the College had an old Harvard student phone book.

He and other alumni at Dean looked through it for members of the Class of 1998 and sent 1,382 of them a message advertising a reception at the Faculty Club.

Judy E. Murray, the recruiting director of the Office of Career Services (OCS), said that in her 12 years working at OCS, she has never heard of such a mass solicitation. Until yesterday, OCS did not have a formal written policy on mass e-mails.

"I think we will have to come up with a written policy and...notify the companies," Murray said. "The last thing we want is for students to be bombarded with some sort of solicitation."

McSherry said she and other members of the firm discussed whether they should send the e-mail her schools have explicit policies forbidding such unsolicited mailings, but she said she didn't think Harvard had me and she didn't check to find out.

"We sent e-mails at Princeton but didn't at Yale," McSherry said. "They do have a policy against mass e-mailing."

Yale's career services office does not, in fact, have a specific policy on mass e-mails.

"We can't have policies about mail--e-mail or U.S. mail," said Director of Undergraduate Career Services and Assistant Dean of Yale College Susan E. Hauser. "We can have policy about what we would give people to use. We would never give outside agencies student names.... We have a very high regard for student privacy."

Hauser said Yale students have received a number of unsolicited e-mails from firms recruiting students over the last few years, but the school has not formulated a specific policy on the practice. Hauser said she has called firms after they have sent mass mailings--both electronic and otherwise--to strongly discourage them from continuing the practice.

Officials at Princeton could not be reached for comment yesterday.

Rick M. Osterberg '96, coordinator of residential computing support for the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, wrote in an e-mail that he has been informed of the incident and is investigating.

Harvard does have policies governing mass e-mails sent by Harvard students, specifically that e-mails may not be "broadcast indiscriminately to large numbers of individuals." Because Dean and Company is not on the Harvard server, it cannot be subjected to this rule.

"We consider Dean and Company's mass e-mail to be objectionable, and after our investigation, we will issue an appropriate reaction to the system administrators of their site," Osterberg said. "If we do not receive an appropriate response from them, we will explore other means of reaction."

Murry said she would also contact officals at Dean and Company to discuss the incident. As of press time, she had not contacted any officials. She said she would discuss the matter with OCS Director Bill Wright-Swadel to determine what action should be taken.

Officials at several Ivy League career services offices said that recruiters have been resorting to tactics like this one more frequently in the last few years. Heather E. Blatt, an assistant in recruiting at Cornell's career services office, said one such e-mail has been sent to students at Cornell this year. Because of the strong economy, recruiters have been particularly aggressive.

"Firms have recent alumni who know their way around they colleges," Hauser said. "They know how do these things They are aggressive."

Students who received the e-mail said they were unhappy with the assault on their inboxes.

"Frankly, I was quite annoyed to be sent that mass e-mail. I've no objection to materials sent in the post or dropped off at the door, but I don't want advertisements cluttering up my inbox," Thomas F. Moore '98 wrote in an e-mail.

The randomness of the mailing particularly disturbed those students who have no interest in consulting whatsoever.

"I'm glad to hear that this was an isolated incident because being bombarded with solicitations from recruiters in my inbox would become annoying very fast," Benjamin L. Brown '98 wrote in an e-mail. "After seeing those people in action at the Career Fair last Friday, I'd just as well stay away from those sharks.