Beginning fall 2005 VCU no longer will provide long-distance services for the students in the dormitories.
Long-distance usage in the dorms has declined in the past several years, and VCU administrators attribute it to the popularity of cell phones.
“I’d guess that 80 percent of students have cell phones,” said William M. Jones, director of VCUnet, the university’s telecommunications division that provides local and long-distance telephone service for students living on campus.
Mark D. Willis, assistant vice president for administrative information technology, said he continues to search for another venue to provide students telephone service. Students now pay 7 cents per minute for the service MCI provides through the university.
“We try to keep the phone rates at a break-even point,” Willis said. “It used to be that the university made money.” Now, Willis said the university could lose money.
Administrators and students across campus said they have witnessed the upward trend of cell- phone usage and the downward spiral of landline long-distance use.
One administrator, Henry G. Rhone, vice provost for student affairs and enrollment services who has been at VCU since 1989, has watched students switch to cell phones.
“I think quite frankly that most students use cell phones to make long-distance calls,” Rhone said. “That’s changed reliance on landlines.”
Students such as Kathleen Hidalgo, a freshman prepharmacy major, rely daily on their cell phones. Hidalgo said she uses hers “between every single class, before I go to bed and when I wake up. Sometimes during meals.”
Willis said the majority of students see little need to sign up for long-distance services through the university because their cell-phone providers offer long-distance in their service plans.
“It wouldn’t matter to me because I don’t get long-distance anyway,” said Joshalyn Levister, a psychology major who lives in the Broad and Belvidere Student Apartments.
Though most students – including Shelley Brown, a freshman philosophy major living in Cabaniss Hall – prefer to use their cell phones or communicate using e-mail, they recognize the importance of having a long-distance service available.
“Long distance is something that we need especially when we go to college because not everyone is from an 804 area code,” Brown said. On the other hand, Levister said she thinks some long-distance service should be available for students.
“Cell phones right now are the best way of communication I think for students,” she said, “but to take away the long distance for housing phones…I don’t think it’s fair unless they have another way to compensate for it.”
For now, VCU’s telecommunications office continues to hunt for another method to compensate for the lack of long-distance service. This could include offering pay as you go cell-phone plans or phone cards for students.
“There are a lot of opportunities for phone service,” Willis said. “We’re going to look at what’s best for VCU. We’ll develop a program that makes sense for students and that’s financially feasible.”