There are no 'out-of-order' signs on the disconnected call boxes

Tag : Emergency Call
The emergency phone inside the 500 building, as well as 10-12 otheremergency phones on campus, have not worked all semester. Accordingto Director of Campus Safety, Emilio Perez, the non-functioningcall boxes are a serious campus safety issue.

By the time Pryor, a campus employee in media services, walked toCampus Safety to report the fire, maintenance personnel had alreadyput it out.

Although Pryor was unable to find a fire extinguisher, there areseveral in the building. They are in recessed cubbyholes, which arepainted the same color as the wall and are marked by small signsplaced well above eye level. This, combined with the out-of-ordercall boxes frustrated Pryor.

"I pushed it [the call button] several times and didn't get aresponse," Pryor said.

Many of then are stainless steel plates on the wall of a building,with a red button marked "Emergency."
Pressing the button would connect immediately to Campus Safety, ifthe box worked. Others look like a traditional phone, but arelabeled for eme rgency use.

The boxes and phones are out of order because the central hub thatis connected by analog phone lines was destroyed, along with the400 building that housed it.

Most campus phones do work because they do not rely on traditionalphone lines. They use voice-over-internet protocol, or VOIP, tosend a digital signal over computer lines. The non-functioning callboxes are in the process of being spliced into the VOIP network.

The blue emergency phones, like the ones in the parking structureon the northeast corner of the campus, still work because they wereoriginally installed as VOIP phones.

According to Director of Academic Computing Technologies, NiloNiccolai, all campus emergency phones should be working soon, butwere expected to be done before school started. Niccolai also saidthat he never thought of signs because he kept expecting the phonesto work.

The work was unexpectedly delayed when the employee who had beenassigned to the task was forced, by illness, to stop. It was hisjob to sort through thousands of underground phone wires and tracethe right ones to splice into the new system, a process that istime consuming, but more efficient than
laying all new phone lines.

No date has been given for completion of the wire correction.