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Bookstores offering KU-specific cell phone plan

Features to be tailored to campus users

The KU Bookstores are offering a cellular phone plan tailored to fit the needs of those on Mount Oread. The plan will take advantage of technology such as global positioning, Internet capability and text messaging to enhance the university's communications possibilities.

KU Bookstores is partnering with Sprint to offer the plan. Tim Norris, bookstore director for the KU Memorial Unions, said the increasing prevalence of cellular phones and their ever-expanding capabilities made the move attractive. As the use of landline phones decreases, new ways of using cellular phones to meet the needs of a community are expanding.

"You're really only limited by your imagination as to what you can do," Norris said. "I think we have a KU-specific plan that is going to give people a good choice."

Among the features Norris said he hopes to include in the plan is unlimited text messaging for students. There is also discussion of forming a text messaging service specifically for emergencies.

The plans are already available for Kansas Union employees and will be made available to students and other units this month. Eventually, it will be available to individual faculty and staff.

Global positioning system technology also provides a number of possibilities. The phone network could potentially be networked with the campus bus system to tell users how far away their bus is.

"Could the phone tell me where the bus is on a cold day so I don't have to stand outside and freeze? We think eventually it could," Norris said.

The phones could also serve a public safety purpose. Students could set the phones when leaving a certain destination, and if they are not home by a certain time, the phone would call a designated contact.

Norris said the plan could serve an academic purpose as well. Phones could send reminders for when class projects are due, when the book buy back period at bookstores are in session and when regalia for commencement must be ordered as well as other dates and events important to the university.

KU Bookstores worked with Network and Telecommunications Services to design the plan. The plan is voluntary, and all features will be on an opt-in basis.

"There are a lot of universities offering plans like this," Norris said. "It looks like the wave of the future. We hope to make it KU-specific enough to be attractive to everyone."

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The beauty of Mount Oread has inspired countless students, faculty and even noted artists over the years. Poet Walt Whitman described the view from the hill as "Stretching out on its own unbounded scale, unconfined. . . Combining the real and ideal, and beautiful as dreams."