After almost a year and a half of delays, frustrated administrators have given the firm responsible for activating the university’s new emergency call box system one month to fix the phones or risk losing its university contract.

Campus officials last week told SST, the Virginia-based security agency contracted to design and build the new blue light phones, to remove all of its call boxes from campus immediately. Twenty of the firm’s approximately 40 boxes have already been removed, according to Karen Frank, vice president for facilities and student housing.

SST officials did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

Thirty-one of the old call boxes will remain operational while the SST boxes are removed and tested, David Morrell, vice president for university safety, said in a campus-wide broadcast e-mail Wednesday night.

The university’s actions appeared to reflect a new willingness to publicly question SST’s design and installation of the tall metallic call boxes meant to enhance Georgetown’s campus safety network. Some students had questioned administrators’ efforts to activate the new system, which cost about $450,000, after numerous delays and continued technical problems since the boxes’ installation in late summer 2004.

“The system has not been reliable and, when you’re talking about an emergency call box system, the most important criterion is reliability,” Frank said. “We have advised them that the issues need to be resolved by the end of this month or we will consider termination of the contract.”

The new call box system has been plagued with difficulties since its initial installation. Nearly half of the SST boxes have been inoperative during much of the past year, and others have proven unreliable in university tests.

Officials said that, despite months of testing, the cause of the technical problems remains unknown. In the past, officials have cited the boxes’ location, SST’s technology and problems with the university’s cellular network as possible problems.

“We’ve tried a number of things,” Frank said. “Now we’re saying, you have to identify the problem.”

Administrators’ new, hardened stance comes on the heels of a string of off-campus robberies and assaults targeting students in the Georgetown area. Campus safety officials say they have taken steps to boost student awareness and increase Department of Public Safety and Metropolitan Police Department patrols in local areas.

Morrell said in his e-mail that the university is working on a plan in case SST is unable to fix its boxes within a month.

In an interview yesterday, Morrell said that the university is taking other steps to improve safety while it waits for SST’s response, including the creation of a Web site with a map of the 31 functioning call boxes.

“We . ultimately came to the conclusion that we either had to have the new system fully working immediately, or go in another direction,” Morrell added. “My expectation is that any emergency call-box system would have to be 100 percent reliable for it to meet our standards.”

Erin Barbato (COL ’06), a member of the Student Safety Advisory Board, said that call box installation is among the most important issues that the board has worked with Morrell to address.

“We were reiterating [to Morrell] how important it is to have functioning call boxes,” Barbato said.

The SSAB has also examined new areas where call boxes could be placed based on input from student surveys, Barbato added. She said that new boxes could be placed on Prospect Street, where many students have said they feel unsafe.

“It would make sense to put call boxes on Prospect Street where we actually live and walk,” Barbato said.

Administrators emphasized that they were taking other steps to increase campus safety such as bolstering the SafeRides program that shuttles students home late at night by adding more vehicles and drivers.

Administrators and officials on the local Advisory Neighborhood Commission said earlier this week that the university is also working with the SSAB to propose the installation of four new streetlamps close to campus.

“All of us are concerned about the incidents that have occurred in recent weeks,” Morrell said in his broadcast e-mail. “Please know that safety and security are very high priorities for our institution.”