OPINION | March 24, 2004

Editorial/Our View
Stay Informed
OIT handled floods of calls despite the announcement made in January about phone system changes

In January, the Office of Information Technology announced the addition of one more digit to campus extensions — an announcement that over 1,000 people apparently weren’t aware of until March 22.

The campus community, including some staff at The Shorthorn, returned from spring break to a little message saying their call couldn’t be completed as dialed because of a change in phone extensions.

On March 19, internal campus calls began requiring the number two be added before the four-digit extension. If people dialed the wrong number, they would immediately get a message telling them that. However, the real problem proved to be voicemail. To access their voicemail accounts, people had to dial the number two before the voicemail extension and the four-digit logon number. The passwords were not changed. After three attempts, the passwords were reset. There was such confusion that OIT had to temporarily change the system to reset after nine attempts instead of three.

This incident was amusing, considering that every department on campus received memos regarding the change. It appears many people either didn’t get the memo or simply did not put forth the effort to inform themselves of the changing extensions. However, even without the memos, people could have kept themselves informed in small ways, such as a Post-It note reminding them of the change.

All the while, OIT operators calmly handled the flood of phone calls Monday from people finding out what they should have known over a month ago. The staff at OIT helps keep this campus going electronically and handles the day-to-day phone and computer network operations as well as all the problems associated with them. They rarely get praise for this, though; instead they often deal with calls from people complaining when things go wrong like what happened Monday.

Fortunately, officials said the mix-up should die down as soon as people do what they should have prepared to do anyway — become familiar with the new system.

OIT deserves some credit both for handling the confusion Monday and for the work they do every day, helping keep the campus running smoothly by keeping the phones working, ensuring everyone can access the Internet anywhere on campus and by manning the computer labs at all hours. So the next time you’re helped by OIT staff, thank them. They will probably appreciate it.

CORRECTION

This editorial should have praised telecommunications operators for handling the more than 1,000 phone calls they received Monday.

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