Q: How many Oreos would it take to stack from the surface of the Earth to the moon?
A: “Double stuff is 23 billion, normal is 26 billion,” said John-Eric Dyer, a Foy Information Line operator at Auburn University in Alabama.
Ohio State student Zac Kerns boasted certainty that his guess of 750 million cookies was correct as he waited on hold, cell phone in one hand, a beer in the other, Thursday night at Larry’s Bar on High Street.
An anxious group of friends huddled near the phone as their faces lit up and dimmed in harmony with the blinking Christmas lights fastened to the ceiling. The bar clock ticked just past 11:30 p.m. as the operator returned with an answer. A roaring laughter burst out from the table.
“No way! I can’t believe it is that high,” exclaimed Kerns, a sophomore in psychology.
Kerns and his friends were making calls to a student-run information line at Auburn University. The service, known as the Foy Information Line, named after the Foy Student Union building that the phone service operates from, is free for anyone to call and will answer nearly any conceivable question.
Several public universities offer similar phone services, but Ohio State is not one of them.
“The Ohio Union hasn’t really considered offering such a service,” said Matt Couch, assistant director of the Ohio Union.
Some students, like Kerns, have turned to other universities for their immediate Q&A gratification. The Foy Information Line receives a number of student and non-student callers from across the country.
“We accommodate any question you have,” said Shrenik Dodhia, a senior in computer science at Auburn University and student supervisor of the Foy Information Line. “If the question is vulgar it depends on the person answering. If they are uncomfortable answering, then they may redirect them or not answer, but we generally try to answer every question.”
The Foy hotline started as a resource for students in locating campus services and information, and evolved into a no-holds-barred information database. It is one of the nation’s longest running service of its kind, according to Melissa Howell, coordinator of Union Building Operations and overseer of the information hotline.
“The union building was built in the ’50s, and there has been some sort of information line since that time. Of course, it has sort of changed and evolved over the years,” Howell said.
Q: Who would win in a fight, a ninja or a samurai?
A: “A ninja because he’s quicker,” said Bob, a Fact Line operator at Bowling Green State University.
Auburn University is not the only school to have an all encompassing information line. Bob, who could not give his last name because of Fact Line policy, said to his knowledge the Fact Line is the only student hotline in Ohio.
“We answer every question known to man. We’ve pretty much gotten them all, I’m sure,” said Bethany, a Fact Line phone operator and junior in Spanish at BGSU.
Bethany said she often receives opinionated questions and she does her best to give an answer and justify it, while reminding the caller it is not provable.
More frequently, she said, students call the hotline for basic campus information and homework questions. Students are encouraged to call the Fact Line with academic problems, but Bethany said they are instructed not to answer a series of questions if it appears as if they are doing a student’s homework.
The Fact Line operates from the Bowen-Thompson Student Union at Bowling Green State University. There are two students working the main desk at the student union at any given time, Bethany said, and one is assigned to the Fact Line. Their responsibilities include general student services, such as selling tickets and renting out laptops, in addition to answering callers.
Bethany, who has been employed there for nearly two years, said the line usually receives 20 to 25 calls per day. The Fact Line is open from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. every day during the regular school year.
Q: How long would it take a turtle to walk across the U.S. from coast to coast?
A: “Umm … what? I would say like a year … maybe,” said Lisa Hayes, an Information Center specialist at the Ohio Union.
In addition to the Fact Line there are at least a dozen other student-run information lines on the East Coast, Howell said.
“We sort of do general information for the Union, that’s our main focus,” said Hayes, a first-year graduate student in social work. “We can offer them information for the university and we try to have some literature here and knowledge about the greater Columbus area.”
Hayes said line attendants can do things such as helping a caller find a good restaurant on campus, but they did not field academic or hypothetical questions.
Both the Walter E. Dennis Learning Center and the math and English tutoring services available to students at OSU said they do not offer assistance over the phone, but they can help in person.
Couch said he first became aware of student information lines from a counterpart of his at the University of Pittsburgh several years ago.
“The sense I got from Pittsburgh is that it is something they are proud of (having), but that it was becoming more of a askjeeves.com than an academic resource,” Couch said.
He also raised concerns about training the phone staff and the cost-benefit of the service.
“It makes you wonder why, if other schools have these ‘godlike’ phone services, a school the size of OSU wouldn’t do something more similar,” Kerns said. “I’m sure it would be helpful to students and it’s just entertaining.”
Dodhia, of the Foy Information Line, said he has received numerous calls by students interested in starting up a similar program at their school, but he feels the concept is not that widespread because most people do not know the service exists.
Q: What is George W. Bush’s favorite food?
A: “That would be Mexican food,” Dyer said.
“We don’t advertise at all,” Dodhia said. “We don’t need to, the people who call us basically do it for us.”
The Foy hotline is one of the busier student information lines. It has three to four operators at any given time and they receive an average of 1,000 calls per day, Dodhia said. Since most cell phones offer free long distance service, they receive a number of calls from other states and sometimes international calls, Dodhia said. The Foy hotline is also unique in that it operates 24 hours during the week and until 9 p.m. on weekends.
The Foy line, much like other hotlines, uses Internet and paperback resources to research queries, but employees also use a computer system that catalogs frequently asked questions to quicken responses.
Despite the oddity of the position, it is just another job to the nearly 30 students who work there, Dodhia said.
“It’s an interesting job from whatever you had previous,” Dodhia said. “To be honest, it’s really the easiest job you could have as a student.”
He said that the average training time for employees is about four hours, but fine tuning ones research skills takes a little more practice.
All said and done, he said, there is some insight to be gained in answering questions, but the job becomes routine after a while.
“During the day, especially from like 6 a.m. until about 5 p.m., we normally have students calling for numbers, or where a certain class is or things like that. In the evening there are calls that tend to be like getting numbers to certain restaurants. And from midnight to 3 a.m., you get the drunk calls,” Dodhia said.
The Foy Information Line can be reached at (334) 844-4244 and the Fact Line at (419) 372-2445.
