☎️🎓 Three Nights of Dead Phone Lines Pushed Albion College to Speed Up Its New Phone System

The Argument

A campus safety phone number is the one number at a college that is not allowed to fail — and at Albion College, it failed three nights in a row. The Pleiad, Albion’s student-run newspaper, reports that Campus Safety phone lines were down the nights of October 5, 6 and 7, 2026, with students alerted by email and text and given a temporary number while lines were restored by midmorning each following day. The college was already six months into replacing its roughly 15-year-old phone system; what the outages changed was the schedule. Administrators moved the Campus Safety switchover up — it had been planned for Thanksgiving break — because, as one of them put it after night two, two nights was two too many.

What Went Down, and When

FACT (The Albion College Pleiad, Oct. 19, 2026): Campus Safety phone lines were down the nights of Oct. 5, 6 and 7, according to emails and text messages sent to students by Albion College Alert; a temporary phone number to contact was included in these emails, and phone lines were restored by midmorning the following day.

FACT (The Pleiad, quoting Associate Dean for Community Standards and Safety Joey Koehn): Following the second night of the phone lines being down, conversations started about next steps. “This is two nights in a row,” Koehn said. “This is two too many. What are the next steps we can take?”

The Fix That Was Already Coming

FACT (The Pleiad, Oct. 19, 2026): A transition in phone systems was already in progress; however, after the issue, the project was “expedited,” Koehn said, and IT director Eric Beadle said the transition for campus safety was originally scheduled for the American Thanksgiving break.

FACT (The Pleiad): The original timing was chosen to allow training with the new system and to interfere as little as possible with faculty routines, and Koehn said the college wanted the transition over break to have the least amount of impact on students and the safety of campus.

FACT (The Pleiad): The old system, Cisco CallManager, is about 15 years old, and Koehn noted that landline phones are not as reliable as they used to be; Beadle called the three-day instance “out of character,” adding, “We pay a lot of money for internet service. It should be reliable.”

What the New System Changes

FACT (The Pleiad, Oct. 19, 2026): The new system, Cisco WebEx, is internet-based, and Beadle said it should shift over to the college’s secondary provider in the case of a disruption in the primary connection as long as there is an internet connection.

FACT (The Pleiad): The new phone system transition has been going on for about six months; IT, Accounting, AmeriCorps and Institutional Advancement have all transitioned to the new phone system, and Beadle said feedback from faculty has been overall positive.

FACT (The Pleiad): Cisco WebEx functions as an app on both cellphones and computers; users can set their own working hours on their phone, calls outside those hours go to voicemail, and faculty can answer calls while outside their office during office hours; Beadle said there will be no direct impact for students, and Koehn said the campus safety phone number will always be accessible to students.

COMMENTARY: The detail that matters most for Albion families is the failover design: the old system’s failure mode was silence, while the new one is built to hop to a backup provider automatically. Albion College got its reminder at the cheapest possible price: three bad nights, a temporary number in every alert, and no reported emergency that went unanswered.

COMMENTARY: There is also a quiet workforce story here. The six-month, department-by-department migration — IT first, then Accounting, AmeriCorps and Institutional Advancement — is how small colleges modernize without a big-bang budget: steady, trainable, one office at a time. The outage simply reordered the queue, putting the safety office where it arguably belonged all along: first.

Frequently Asked Questions

What happened to Albion College’s phone lines in October 2026?

Campus Safety phone lines were down the nights of Oct. 5, 6 and 7; students were alerted by Albion College Alert emails and texts with a temporary contact number, and lines were restored by midmorning the following day (FACT: The Albion College Pleiad, Oct. 19, 2026).

Why did the college speed up its phone-system change?

The transition was already underway, but after the second straight night of outages administrators expedited it; the Campus Safety switchover had originally been scheduled for Thanksgiving break to allow training and minimize disruption (FACT: The Pleiad).

What is Albion College switching to?

From the roughly 15-year-old Cisco CallManager landline system to Cisco WebEx, an internet-based system that runs as an app on phones and computers and can shift to a secondary provider when the primary connection is disrupted (FACT: The Pleiad).

Does the change affect students directly?

IT director Eric Beadle said there will be no direct impact for students, and Associate Dean Joey Koehn said the campus safety phone number will always be accessible to students (FACT: The Pleiad, Oct. 19, 2026).

Want Jackson’s top local stories in one place? Browse the businesses shaping the area in the NeighborClick Local directory — JOIN the FREE Private Insider List for local stories, business spotlights, community updates and even if you don’t have business you’ll be an Insider.