Temporary Phone Directories Cut Due to Overcrowding, Complaints

Crowded Houses and complaints about wrong numbers in past years led University Information Systems (UIS) not to print a temporary telephone directory for all students this fall.

A temporary directory was printed for first-years, but until permanent all-student phone books arrive in November, upperclass students will have to rely on directory assistance calls and on-line searches.

Until November, students can call directory assistance at 493-1000 or search the on-line directory at http://www.fas.harvard.edu/fas/directory.shtml.

According to Director of Telecommunications Services Nancy Kinchla, UIS had planned to print a temporary directory, but the Undergraduate Housing Office (UHO) requested that it not do so.

Undergraduate Housing Officer Susan R. Kane said House overcrowding was to blame. The large number of students enrolling meant that the Houses were unable to find rooms for all students by the first week of August, when UIS needed its directory information.

Also, Kane said in the past, students have called their House offices to complain about their information being listed incorrectly in the temporary directory. Not publishing the directories was aimed at eliminating those complaints.

For the emergency information that students used to find in the temporary directories, Kinchla says students can turn to "Playing it Safe," a pamphlet created by the Harvard University Police Department (HUPD) and left in student mailboxes.

"We were very thorough about emergency numbers in 'Playing it Safe,'" said Rachael Powell, HUPD manager for administrative services.

While Powell says HUPD has already given the pamphlets to the College for distribution, students in several Houses, including Quincy and Eliot, have still not received them.

To cope with the influx of directory assistance requests it receives at the beginning of every year, UIS hired several additional operators this fall.

"People have not been put on hold longer this year than last year," Kinchla said. She said she won't know until the end of the month whether the lack of temporary directories caused a rise in calls to directory assistance.

"We've always had so many calls anyway that I wondered whether anyone really uses the directories," she added.