When Ricardo Negrete lived in the dorms, he only used the landline to call one place.
“We’d only ever use the phone to call the front desk ““ never anything else,” Negrete, a fourth-year Chicano/a studies student, said. “All of my friends have cell phones, so there was really no point in using the landline.”
Newer, cheaper ways of communicating, such as cellular phones and Internet chat ““ popular among students and faculty at UCLA ““ provide alternatives to landlines in dorm rooms and pay phones on campus.
Each dorm room is provided a landline, but dorm landlines are very rarely used, said Karen Hedges, assistant director of the Office of Residential Life.
Negrete, who currently lives in a university apartment on Glenrock Avenue, said he and his roommates no longer have a landline.
But despite such infrequent use of landlines on the Hill, university officials have said they will remain in place, specifically for emergency purposes.
There has been little discussion of eliminating landlines in the dorms, Hedges said, and they are currently kept in place because they come in handy when it comes to calling faculty, a neighbor or 911.
“At the present time, the phones will remain in place for 911-calling,” said Michael Schilling, director of UCLA Communications Technology Services in an e-mailed statement.
Residence Telephone Services was unable to comment, but according to the Residence Telephone Services Web site, “The telephone in your room allows you unlimited dialing within the on-campus residential community. … Unlimited dialing includes Emergency 911, RTS and Telephone Repair.”
Hedges said there was no harm in keeping the landlines, since she didn’t think they currently cost the university anything.
“When students use (the landlines), the student pays a fee to use them,” she said.
Jennifer Patton, a first-year global studies student, said her dorm came equipped with a landline when she first moved in. But Patton, who lives in Dykstra Hall and never uses her landline, instead relies on her cell phone.
“My roommates and I don’t even have the phone plugged in,” Patton said. “We don’t even know how to use it.”
Patton, who has had a cellular phone since she was 11 years old, said cell phones have eliminated the need for landlines and pay phones.
“I would only use a pay phone if I didn’t have my cell phone for some reason, but I couldn’t even tell you where one was if I need it on campus,” Patton said. “I’d definitely have to look around or ask where a pay phone was if I needed it.”
There are approximately 300 pay phones on campus, Schilling said in the e-mailed statement, providing another alternative to landlines in addition to cell phones.
But the portability and convenience of cell phones has made landlines and pay phones obsolete, Negrete said.
“I probably haven’t used a pay phone in like six years,” he said. “I guess the last time I used one was before I got a cell phone.”
Besides cell phones, Negrete said, there are other forms of communication that provide convenient and cheap alternatives to landlines or pay phones.
Internet video chat programs, such as Skype, for instance, let students basically talk for free via their computer.
Hillary Lyden, a third-year art history student, has a boyfriend who lives in Holland.
But Lyden is not racking up debt in her attempts to contact her boyfriend, because she relies on Skype to talk to her overseas boyfriend every day online for free, she said.
But despite the money video chat programs save, they do have their drawbacks, she said.
“The bad thing about talking over the Internet is that if we’re both using wireless, (the connection) can be kind of finicky,” Lyden said.
But Lyden said the risk of losing connection once or twice during a call is worth saving the money it costs to call long-distance on her phone.
“My cell phone is perfect and cheap for calling people in the country,” she said. “And the Internet is a perfect way to keep in touch with people in other parts of the world for free.”
But whether students are talking on their cell phone or over the Internet, both provide a better alternative to landlines and pay phones, Lyden said.
“Landlines and pay phones are being used less and less,” she said. “I think their use is slowly coming to an end.”