I read “Phone outages annoy students” (Dec. 11, p. 3) and have found one serious misquote regarding what I said to The Hatchet. In the tenth paragraph I am quoted as having said that the problem persisted for one and one-half weeks and that all systems had returned to normal status Dec. 8. In fact what I said was that the problem had occurred one and one-half weeks ago and was resolved the same day. I also said that as of Dec. 8, long-distance calls were still being routed correctly through all of the University’s long-distance carriers.

I realize this may seem like a small concern to you and hardly worth mentioning, but please be assured that we do not take phone functionality outages of any kind lightly. The fact that we had problems with long-distance calls even for a brief period of time is very disturbing to us and we did everything possible to resolve the problem on the same day that it was identified.

To misquote me as saying that this problem persisted for a week and a half is a gross exaggeration of the scope of the problem and the facts should be made clear to your readers. Also, if you could note the correct spelling of my name, which is “Megill” and not “McGill,” it would be greatly appreciated.

It is my sincere hope that we will be able to minimize such misquotes in the future so that the Telecommunications department can continue to work together with The Hatchet to make sure the telecommunications issues that affect your customers are well and thoroughly represented.

-Christopher G. Megill

manager, Client Services Telecommunication