Allen University, a historically black institution in Columbia, S.C., has handed out cellphones to its students, faculty members, and staff, according to The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education.
Through a deal with Sprint, the university is providing about 700 people with phones — along with 400 minutes of daytime calling and unlimited nighttime and weekend use — for a monthly fee of more than $10,000.
The cellphone giveaway may seem to fit within the growing collegiate tradition of high-tech promotional tricks, but campus officials say it’s designed to bolster security. Each of the cellphones comes with global-positioning technology that will help security officers pinpoint a caller’s location in the event of an emergency. —Brock Read
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