Phone pranksters push students' buttons

Engineering freshman Vu Do didn't think much of the prank phone calls he was receiving until he was called a "yellow-skinned bastard" by the man on the other end of the line. Do, who finally called University Police after four "annoyance calls," is one of many victims of telephone harassment at the University. Do said he received a total of seven phone calls containing threats, racial slurs and falsified information. During one of the calls, the caller pretended to be a Daily Pennsylvanian reporter who said that he had "received a list from the dean's office that said [Do is] an international student," Do said. Do replied, "No, I don't think so because even though I'm Vietnamese I come from Austin, Texas." On a subsequent call, Do was congratulated and told that he had won a prize in a contest. When he asked the caller what the prize was, the caller said, "A trip back to Vietnam." Do's racially harassing calls eventually stopped after he told the caller that his phone was tapped. But racially harassing phone calls are not the only type of "annoyance calls" students receive. In fact, most harassing phone calls are sexually oriented. A female College senior, who asked not to be identified, said she received a number of sexually suggestive calls before she contacted University Police. "He knew my name . . . I knew [that] I knew his voice and it scared me," she said. "When I told my roommates about it they kind of laughed it off. [They said] it was just some kid playing with the phone." The student said the phone calls became "obscene . . . sexual calls -- suggestive, not anything a decent human being would say," and at that point she called the police. The student eventually used the "Star-69" feature on her off-campus phone, which immediately connected her with the caller's answering machine. While she caught the man who was harassing her, on-campus students, like Do, do not have access to the "Star-69" feature. Penntrex Manager Darien Yamin said that even if the "Star-69" feature is added to the Penntrex system, students would still have to request the feature from University Police or Victim Support and Special Services. This is the same process that students currently must go through in order to have their phone calls monitored. According to University Police Sergeant Ivan Kimble, students should not call the telephone company to report incidents but should call University Police first. "We're usually the initial contact for those kind of incidents," he said. "We make out the initial report." Rose Hooks, interim director of Victim Support, said the police officer who files the report usually refers the victim to her office. Hooks said that Victim Support offers several suggestions on how to cope with continuing "annoyance calls." "If they know [when they pick up the phone] it's going to be a harassing phone call, we tell them to hang up right away and not to talk to the person on the other end of the line," she said. "If they are hang ups, we tell them to date and log the time of the calls received -- keep a record of it." Hooks added that keeping a record will help the phone company if it needs to track calls. Kimble agreed that hanging up is the best idea. "They shouldn't give any kind of feedback to the person," he said. "If you don't really respond to it, a lot of times it will stop on its own." Hooks said that if the phone calls "continue to come in two to three times a day," a phone tap may be installed through Bell of Pennsylvania. Hooks also said that telephone harassment complaints tend to increase during "high pressure periods." "It happens quite frequently . . . during the stress times," she said. "It seems to escalate during exam times." According to the Almanac, which lists all "threatening," "harassing" and "unwanted" phone call complaints weekly, the greatest number of complaints in one month came last October. In that month, 14 incidents of telephone harassment were reported. In November, 13 incidents were reported. During December and January, a combined 22 incidents were reported, and Winter Break consumed at least three weeks of that time period. To date, ten reports have been filed with University Police this month. Kimble said these statistics are slightly misleading because people often misinterpret calls as being harassing when they actually are not. "Sometimes it's not harassment but people take it as such," he said. "Their phone number might be similar to a pizza place's number . . . [And] a lot of times it's someone they know."