Who needs to be able to call for help anyway? Obviously, not students living on campus at A&M-Commerce. Starting sometime in the near future, landlines will only be provided to students that want to pay the extra fee for them. All lines will be removed from the individual rooms in every residence hall on campus, leaving students without cell phones with no immediate way to call for help in case of an emergency.
On one hand, it is easy to say that the majority of students living on campus have cell phones, because they do. But on the flip side, the ones who may not be able to afford cell phones or just don’t have them, are left with no means to reach anyone. In the event that a non-student comes into the residence halls and attacks a resident, what is the resident supposed to do? Throw up their hands and ask their attacker to wait one second while they run to the nearest courtesy phone?
With the plan to have only one courtesy phone on each floor of the residence halls, it has become a major concern for students on living campus.
Sure, the card reader systems installed in some residence halls make it slightly safer. But all any person has to do is stand outside one of the residence halls’ doors until a resident with an ID swipes their card to open the door. That, or ask one of the many smokers stationed at most residence hall entrances, Whitley especially, to let them in. In short, if a person wants to get into a residence hall, they can get in with just a bit of patience or good timing.
This decision was put into motion close to three years ago, when students voiced their complaints about the extra fees being tacked onto their tuition. But while the plan is to remove the phones, decisions about housing charges being lowered have not yet been discussed.
If the University is indeed trying to cut back on costs for housing, why not keep the phone lines in parts of residence halls and advertise it as such? Those who are not concerned about having a landline will not have to fuss with it, and those who would like the luxury, would have the option of a phone line without any charges added to an already fee-ridden tuition.
Even with phones on every floor of the residence halls, there is cause for concern. Having the courtesy phones in those places could still pose a problem if a student cannot make it out of their room to call for help, but would at least make the phones lines more accessible.