804 set for new halls

Confusion spread across campus as each student arrived back from the holidays and tried calling there friends in other resident halls; however, instead of being greeted by there friends voice they were greeted by an operator or a busy signal.

Upon arrival, students in Bobcat Village, Napier and Bell were all given new 804 prefix numbers; however, Wells, Sanford, Adams, Terrell and all of the GC&SU office numbers were not changed. Many students were unaware of the number change, and even if they did know about it, they still had no idea how to get in touch with their friends.

“When the numbers changed in Napier I was outside on my cell phone all of the time because I didn’t know how to call my friends in the other resident halls. Someone should have at least told us how the new phone numbers worked. It took us forever to find out ourselves how to call people; we all thought that there was something wrong with our phones,” said Freshman Karen Farmer.

Housing had valid reasons for changing the phone number.

“This is not something we wanted to do,” said Paul Jahr,assistant vice president for Student Affairs. “It was something we had to do. The numbers had to change because the 445 prefix is reserved for government agencies in Baldwin County.

All of the property except for Terrell and all of the GC&SU offices belong to LLC which is a private company, not a government agency.

“Which meant we could no longer use the 445 prefix,” said Martha Strawsma, assistant to vice president Business & Finance/Director of Administrative Services. This has caused the state of Georgia and Alltel, a local phone company, to work together in switching phone lines over at various times.

If you currently have a prefix with 445 the only way to call the 804 prefix is if students dial 9 first and then the seven digit number. However, as soon as the students from Wells, Adams, Sanford and Terrell move into the new resident halls, Parkhurst and Foundation, their numbers will also be switched over to the 804 prefix. Once Alltel switches the rest of the numbers over, students will be able to dial the last four digits of their friends’ number and get in touch with them no matter what resident hall they live in.

“Numbers will remain the same for all GC&SU offices and Terrell because they still belong to the state of Georgia,” said Jahr.

This means that professors will have to dial 9 to get in touch with students and students will have to do the same to get in touch with professors.

“At first everyone was extremely confused, and some of us still don’t really know what is going on, but I think once everyone gets moved into the new resident halls, it will sort itself out and soon the confusion will disappear,” said Freshman Leslie Lineback.

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Jan 24 2003. Filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry