Line Tappers Make Calls, Others Get Bills

Some students at the University and at M.I.T. are being charged for phone calls they never made.

Personnel at the Cambridge office of the New England Telephone and Telegraph Company stated yesterday that it is a frequent practice for M.I.T. and Harvard students to hook their phones to other students'' lines, thus transferring their message units and the subsequent charges for them to their victims.

They stated that this is a unique practice at the two schools, and speculated that "it is probably being done by electronics students."

Although the phone company can trace the wire switching if it is discovered while the wires are still connected, "most students know they can't get away with it for long and other switch to another number after a few months, or stop it for a while."

As a result, some students with unlimited suburban service have never called Boston or any other place for which they could be charged mesage units, but have been getting message unit bills--in addition to their regular charges--for amounts as high as $5.00, $10.00, and $15.00

These figures represent thousands of message units for calls they never made.

If victims complain about their large phone bills, the phone company may at times make adjustments, sometimes up to fifty percent of the overcharge, depending on "how honest the phone company thinks the complainants are."

One of the employees at the Cambridge office, a young lady who is in charge of some of the phone numbers on the University exchange, suggested yesterday that the College administration step in and do something about the situation. "It's not the phone company's fault we can't trace these people," she said. "It's the fault of the professors. They ought to teach you boys more morals."

She suggested that the University patrol the students' rooms in order to make sure they weren't calling on other people's numbers.

Emerson Hunt, general information manger at the Boston office of the company, when contacted yesterday, stated that he had never heard of such a thing and was "sure it couldn't be wide spread in the telephone system."