Calls to campus can now be traced

Phone device can help catch harassers All Penntrex telephone lines have been equipped with a call tracing feature, partially in response to a rash of harassing phone calls made to DuBois College House earlier this semester, University officials said. The feature, which is similar to Bell of Pennsylvania's "star-57" tracing feature, can be activated by dialing 257 if the customer receives a harassing phone call, Penntrex manager Darien Yamin said. The number of the caller is recorded by Bell of Pennsylvania and can be given to University Police to assist in harassment investigations. This differs from the better-known "star-69" feature, which immediately redials the caller's number. All Penntrex phones have had the new capacity since last week. It costs $1 each time the feature is used, Yamin said. Activation will cost the University about $16,000, or $3.80 for each of Penntrex's approximately 4,300 lines, Support Services Director Marie Witt said. In the past, students who wanted harassing phone calls traced had to call University Police or Victim Support and Special Services, who would then call Bell of Pennsylvania to activate the feature. Under that system, all calls made to a monitored phone number would be traced, regardless of whether or not they were harassing. After the harassing calls made to DuBois residents and the building's front desk, Interim President Claire Fagin said students would eventually have the capacity to trace harassing phone calls. "When everything happened in DuBois House, the situation was escalated," said Witt. Price and billing problems delayed installation of the new feature. Bell of Pennsylvania originally wanted to charge a one-time $11 per phone line fee to activate the feature, Witt said. Yamin said Penntrex also developed a way of collecting billing data that made the feature possible to install. When a student receives a harassing phone call, Yamin said, "you hang up, get a dial tone, dial the code, and then call the [University] Police to report the incident." The traced phone number is then filed with the Bell of Pennsylvania Annoyance Call Group, where it will be made available to University Police after arrangements have been made. Assistant Director of Victim Support Rose Hooks said the new feature will "cut down on the process time for getting a trace on a student's telephone." She said the addition of the feature has been considered for a long time, and its inception should deter people from making harassing phone calls. Yamin said a letter to all students living in on-campus residences was delivered to students last week, and advertisements in The Daily Pennsylvanian will appear this week explaining how to use the call tracing feature.

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