Following an upgrade to McGill’s phone infrastructure in February 2024, the McGill Students’ Nightline has been experiencing difficulties with its phone system. The Nightline is a student-run organization providing confidential active listening services, dependent on telephone infrastructure provided by McGill. Despite attempts to resolve these difficulties, the Nightline remains without the resources it needs to operate safely and effectively.
The Nightline provides confidential, anonymous, and non-judgmental listening services to the McGill community, available seven days a week, from 6 p.m. to 3 a.m..
Ava Fuchs, External Coordinator of the Nightline, told The Tribune that she cannot publicly disclose the exact nature of the problems the Nightline is experiencing, out of interest for student safety.
“I can’t disclose exactly what the issues are, but they are related to both volunteer and caller safety,” Fuchs said. “Our volunteers aren’t able to provide all of the functions that we normally would want them to. It’s also related to the safety of the caller if they were in a crisis situation.”
The problems began in February 2024, when the Nightline transitioned from using a private phone system independent of McGill to a newly installed network shared by the whole university.
Hamza Abu Alkhair, the recently appointed Director of Clubs and Services at the Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU), told The Tribune that McGill began migrating its phone systems to Cisco’s Unified Communications System (UCS) in 2023. All new phones installed at McGill are connected to the UCS.
“In the late Fall of 2023, Nightline requested that their phone system be upgraded and UCS was the only available solution,” Abu Alkhair wrote. “Nightline have had their new phones active since February 2024.”
After approaching SSMU with the Nightline’s difficulties in Fall 2024, Fuchs says the Nightline executives received a tepid response, and that SSMU failed to find a solution.
“We tried to get [SSMU] to get [McGill IT Services] to change [the phones] back, or get more information, or get maintenance, but they’ve been pretty unresponsive,” Fuchs stated. “We’ve been […] on them, and just nothing’s happened. They’ve tried to do a couple of things, and they’re like, ‘It should be working out,’ and it just doesn’t.”
Abu Alkhair acknowledged the issues the Nightline has been experiencing following McGill’s migration to the UCS, and confirmed that all phones used by SSMU have similar problems.
“We have been working with Nightline’s external coordinator and McGill IT to get these issues resolved since September,” Abu Alkhair wrote to The Tribune. “We have also been coordinating with Nightline and a McGill technician who has been directly in touch with Nightline about these issues.”
Despite SSMU’s efforts, the Nightline’s issues still have not been resolved.
“McGill went directly to Cisco about [these] issues just before the holiday break and they recommended a reboot of the UCS system,” Abu Alkhair wrote to The Tribune. “This was tested by Nightline in early January, but [the system] still isn’t working.”
SSMU President Dymetri Taylor says he was only recently informed about the issues the Nightline has been experiencing, but affirmed that SSMU is working to find a solution.
“This is something that has newly cropped up on my radar,” Taylor wrote to The Tribune. “As far as I’m aware, we’re looking into getting them the new and necessary phones to replace the old ones.”
Despite the technical difficulties, the Nightline continues to serve the McGill community. Fuchs informed The Tribune that the Nightline plans to expand its operations to make its services more accessible for a bilingual student community.
“McGill Students’ Nightline will begin implementing a French language chatline on Wednesdays and Fridays starting in February,” Fuchs wrote. “This new feature is a great way for us to make our services accessible to McGill students and members of the community who feel more comfortable chatting in French.”
