Shrill telephone rings in residence halls at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln have been replaced by the electronic beeps and ringtones of cell phones.
Formerly standard landlines in dorm rooms are no longer included in housing contracts. They used to cost between $650,000 and $700,000 a year but often weren't used, said Doug Zatechka, director of university housing.
"It's not a communication device anymore," he said. "Communication implies someone is going to pick up the phone or have voice mail and it's not happening."
That money will now be used to help install wireless Internet in residence halls, which costs about $900,000, Zatechka said.
This calendar year, housing will pay Windstream Communications about a third of its usual contract cost for spring and summer's phone service.
UNL's phone service contract with Windstream ends this December, Zatechka said, and housing will not sign any more landline contracts.
The end of the contract, students' disuse of landlines and their requests for wireless Internet created "a perfect storm" environment for removing the phones this semester, he said.
Wireless Internet is now at Selleck, Neihardt and Sandoz halls as well as the Courtyards, Zatechka said, but the service isn't flawless yet. He expects other halls will have wireless by the end of the semester.
Within a month about 2,500 excess phones will become two piles of plastic and metal, and a local vendor will recycle them, said Glen Schumann, associate director of housing facilities operations.
The telecommunications office in Nebraska Hall will keep some phones in case campus residents want to buy landline service for about $9 a month.
Front desks at residence halls will keep their landlines. Desk workers can contact residents through notes in mailboxes or by sending resident assistants to rooms if necessary, said Keith Zaborowski, associate director of residence life.
This year's housing contracts also asked for student cell phone numbers and permission to send students text messages via front desk computers.
Desk workers won't send text messages often, Zaborowski said, and won't give out cell phone numbers upon request as they did with room phone numbers in the past.
In fact, desk workers do not have access to a database of residents' cell phone numbers, just a list of students who agreed to receive text messages.
Only residence directors and assistant residence directors have access to the database, Zaborowski said. In emergencies, desk workers could page on-call residence directors who would then access the database for phone numbers of affected students.
"We try to be judicious about how we use student cell numbers," Zaborowski said. "We don't want to bombard students."
rachelalbin@dailynebraskan.com
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