Students who live on campus this year have been provided with a new, long distance service; AT&T ACUS.

With the coming of AT&T ACUS, many students have noticed some changes for the better. The new service brought separate phone bills for each roommate, the ability to use a phone other than your own to make a long distance call and your own personal security code that would protect students from fraud.

With these, the AT&T ACUS System seemed to offer the solutions to questions that had been ever-present in residence hall life, but they haven't been telling Penn State the whole story.

At the beginning of last semester, when this system was introduced, each student was given a "calling guide" that explained how to use their personal code, how to pay their bill and how the rate periods work.

This brochure was helpful if you wanted to pick up the phone and make a call to a person that you knew was home, but what if that person was not home or did not answer the phone? Most students would assume that, as it is with regular AT&T service, they would not be charged . . . WRONG!

After 30 seconds of ringing (that is approximately after 5 rings) you are (sometimes) charged for a one minute call on the AT&T ACUS system.

Impossible? Apparently not. AT&T ACUS has been charging (some) on-campus students for the privilege of excessively ringing someone since it was first introduced.

When we contacted the AT&T ACUS service center about this charge, we were told that it is to "discourage" tying up of limited outgoing phone lines by a person who lets the phone continuously ring.

The first question that comes to mind would have to be, "Is this really a problem?" Yes, Penn State does have limited outgoing phone lines, as I'm sure everyone has noticed, but what person has the patience to listen to a ringing phone for more than a minute or two?

This "abuse" of phone lines by itself cannot be causing the shortages of outgoing lines that are occurring on campus.

Secondly, does charging a student for more than 30 seconds of long distance ringing really work toward opening another line as AT&T ACUS claims, or does it just garner more revenue for the servicing company?

To be honest, it probably would discourage the use of the phone lines in this manner, but they FORGOT TO TELL ANYBODY ABOUT THE CHARGE. Oops!

By AT&T ACUS not telling their customers about this charge, it not only voids their argument about a deterrent, but they also affirm our assumption that this is nothing more than another fee that they can slide in on unknowing students.

So what do we do? The only true alternative to using AT&T ACUS would be using a calling card of another company or just refusing to use this system altogether.

In the meantime, you can voice your concerns to AT&T ACUS by calling their "service center" at 1-800-445-6063. It took us almost an hour to reach one of their representatives, imagine the amount of time that we tied up a phone line just trying to contact AT &T ACUS.

It says on their brochure that AT&T is the "right choice." That may be, but AT&T ACUS is certainly not our choice!