FSUPD phone line down twice in August

By Bella Grimaldi

News Editor

Two Framingham State University Police Department phone line outages occurred on Aug. 21 and Aug. 25, according to an FSU Alert that was emailed to students. 

According to FSUPD Chief Joseph Cecchi, the emergency line phone or PD cell number received four calls during the Aug. 21 outage and 10 calls during the Aug. 25 outage. 

He said FSUPD was not notified of any emergencies during the Aug. 21 outage and notified of one emergency during the Aug. 25 outage.

“FSUPD also ensured that notification of phone line outages on both dates was passed along to Framingham fire and police,” said Cecchi in an email to The Gatepost.

The Aug. 21 outage lasted about an hour, according to Mike Zinkus, executive director of infrastructure and operations.

Students were first alerted about the phone lines going out at 10:29 a.m. A second email was sent at 11:34 a.m. informing students the phone lines were back up and running. 

Zinkus said once Information Technology Services (ITS) was notified of the issue, it was resolved in about 15 minutes.

He added the main phone line was unavailable for about half an hour.   

According to Zinkus, this outage was caused by a short circuit in the Hemenway Hall elevator. The short circuit caused the phone system in the elevator to repeatedly call University Police by itself, which stopped other calls from reaching FSUPD.  

He said, “It was tying up the phone line. So if it was timed correctly, it’d be like you’re calling a restaurant on a Friday night and it’s busy. You have a bunch of people ordering, you might sneak into that one slot and actually get through, but for the most part, that line would be unavailable.”

He added the malfunction with the elevator call button was the only case he’s aware of occurring in his 25 years working at the University.

“It’s just a technical malfunction. … It’s technology. It’s not perfect. Things happen and as IT, it’s our job to identify it and resolve it as quickly as possible,” Zinkus said. 

He said the repair of the malfunction was a routine fix.

According to Zinkus, ITS tests the elevators’ phone systems once a year. 

Students were first notified of the Aug. 25 outage at 5:39 p.m.

A second FSU Alert email was sent at 10:33 p.m. notifying students the FSUPD phone lines were back in service. 

“Once we were notified of that, we opened a case with Comcast,” said Zinkus.

He added the outage was resolved within two to three hours, but additional testing was required before students were notified. 

According to Zinkus, this outage was caused by Comcast, which is the company that provides the circuits to campus.

He said during this outage, students would have still been able to reach University Police. The outage stopped calls coming to and from campus.

“Comcast had an outage on their end. So our phone system wasn’t down per se. Everything internal was still working,” said Zinkus. 

According to Zinkus, Comcast didn’t provide the University with information about the cause of the outage. 

“Something of this nature is typically a technical issue or power outage on their end,” he said.  

Zinkus said there was no cost to the University to resolve these outages. 

“If employees have to work to rectify something, there are costs associated with what they’re getting paid. In terms of having to provide money to Comcast … that’s all part of a service agreement,” he said. 

According to Zinkus, when there is an outage, there is another phone number that can be used to reach University Police. This number is listed in the FSU Alert email.

He said this line is set up through a separate company called Bandwidth.

The phone circuits from Comcast and Bandwidth were installed in July, 2021, according to Zinkus.  

He said there are approximately 1,000 phones across campus and it’s not feasible to test them.

He said, “They register with the system so we can see in real time whether something is up or down.” 

Freshman Jovani Cole said he wasn't aware of the phone outages and was surprised to learn about them.

Junior Cory Murtaugh said he was aware of the outages but was not impacted by them.

He said he believed he was well informed about the phone line outages. 

Junior Luis Rodriguez said he wasn’t aware of the outages because they happened in late August before he moved back to campus. 

Rodriguez said he thinks University Police are accessible to him.

“There are the blue phones around campus. … I think their [FSUPD’s] presence is pretty well known and they are easy to access,” he said. 

Sophomore Leoneiry Andujar said she did read some emails about the phone outage but didn't pay much attention to them because she was home.

“I do find that crazy. I feel like it shouldn’t happen again just in case of an emergency,” she said.

Sophomore Paola Martinez said she didn’t hear about the outages and didn’t feel impacted by them because she was home at the time they occurred. 

She added she thinks University Police are accessible and she “just needs to make a quick call” to reach them if needed.