Beginning this fall, all students with a valid DarTalk account will have access to voice mail for a fee of $3.50 a month.
The College's new VMX 300 voice mail system, purchased last December in conjunction with the Ericsson MD110 telephone switch, will be made available to students as well as the faculty and staff it now serves.
"Technology is advancing, and the switch was capable of providing us with the latest in technological data," said Director of Administrative Services and Risk Manager Marcia Colligan.
"We try to make available to students whatever is possible," she said.
The voice mail system will allow each user to record a 30-second personal greeting and save up to 20 messages of one minute or less for up to 30 days.
Each voice mail account will be assigned a personal security code so students who share a telephone number but have separate DarTalk accounts may each maintain an individual, secure voice mailbox and record their own personal greetings.
Students can use this security code to retrieve their messages from any touch-tone phone. Callers can leave messages if they are using a touch-tone phone.
To acquaint students with the new system, Telephone Services will send out an informational brochure on the voice mail system and set up a "help desk" September 20-22.
In addition, the area coordinator and the undergraduate advisors in each dorm will be trained to show students how the system operates.
"It is nice to have someone to walk through it with you the first time, but it is a very simple system," Colligan said. "Any Dartmouth student will be able to understand."
