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The State of 911 on Campus

Should you need to dial 911 from campus, be wary. When you make the call, the Eugene dispatch services may not be able to pinpoint your location. Does this make 911 a joke?

In the event of an emergency people generally know exactly what to do. The routine has been ingrained into our brains since we were little - dial 911. But when dialing from a phone on the University of Oregon campus, this is not always the best way to get a response to an emergency. On some occasions it is difficult to pinpoint the origin of an emergency call.

The problem lies in the custom phone system used by the University. When attempting to find the source of a 911 call from a campus phone using Enhanced 911, a line-tracing feature available in the Eugene/Springfield area, the information returned shows the location as the bottom of Oregon Hall - the location of the phone system. Oregon Hall turns up no matter what the call's origin.

Norm Ziolkowski, captain of the fire and EMS station at 1695 Agate Street, doesn't think that this is a problem. "We usually don't use the Enhanced 911 feature unless a person hangs up the phone," said Ziolkowski. "We try to keep a person with an emergency on the line and get specific directions to their location. At the same time we're relaying that information to the officers en route."

But there are possible cases where a person may not be able to relay their location. Danielle Carter is a junior majoring in Journalism. In some cases, such as fires, she thinks that "people aren't going to be thinking about staying on the phone" if they are within harms reach. In some situations such as cardiac arrest and various forms of assault, an emergency call could easily be interrupted. Carter worries about cases such as rape, where a phone could be easily disconnected. "Having been in the dorms, I think that rape situations are a serious issue," Carter says.

While Ziolkowski claims that there is not a problem responding to emergencies, the Associate Director of Oregon Public Safety (OPS), Tom Hicks, said otherwise. "The paramedics have often driven up and down the street looking for a campus address." The first seven minutes are the most critical time frame as far as responding to medical and fire emergencies, according to Ziolkowski.

Hicks does offer one solution to the current problem with 911: the campus emergency line. While it doesn't come to mind as quickly as 911, the number for the campus emergency line is 6-6666. According to Hicks, by dialing this number OPS will know the exact location of the phone call. He also mentions that OPS officers often know the campus better than off-campus response teams. OPS can often arrive on the scene quicker, given their location on campus.

David Barta, director of Telecommunications Services here at the University, said that the reason that Enhanced 911 does not work for university phone lines is because of the Point Branch Exchange (PBX) switching system used by the University.

The purpose of the PBX system is to keep telecommunication costs down. "There are around 7,000 phone lines on campus," said Barta. With the PBX system, the University only has to pay for 500 lines. The rest are maintained by the PBX system. "Under these circumstances we pay about $60 a month per line for 500 lines. If we didn't have the system, it'd be around $20 to $30 per line for 7,000 lines."

The University's PBX system could feasibly be hooked up to the Enhanced 911 system. A server that contains a database of all campus phone numbers and the locations of those phones could be set up and connected to the PBX system.

After the database is set up, a special circuit called a 'camatrunk' must also be installed between the database and 911 dispatch services. The camatrunk then allows dispatch services to trace the location of an incoming 911 call by using the information stored on the database.

According to Barta, there are two main reasons the University has not set up Enhanced 911 services for the campus area- cost and maintenance. In order to install such a system, the University would have to contract US West, at a cost of about $25,000 a year, to use one of their systems. The other option would be to buy a system for anywhere from $50,000 to $100,000.

The cost of maintaining the database is separate in either case. Barta stressed the fact that phone numbers are frequently added, deleted and moved around campus. Given such circumstances the database would have to be updated constantly in order to keep up with the changes.

Enhanced 911 services may or may not be available on the University campus in the near future. In the meantime, Hicks recommends dialing 6-6666 in the case of certain emergencies. "We're not going to argue if you dial 911, but if you dial 6-6666 we'll know exactly where you are," said Hicks.

Ben Nahorney, a senior majoring in Journalism, is a staff writer for the Oregon Commentator