A group of Kansas University students is mobilizing to save KU Info, the phone service that answered 160,000 questions last year alone.

The interim leader of KU’s student affairs division, Mary Lee Hummert, said Friday that KU Info wasn’t on the chopping block, and KU in fact may expand the service.

But that’s not the way Susan Elkins, KU Info’s program director, understands it.

Elkins said Hummert told her last week KU Info’s phone service would be replaced with Internet services after this semester.

“I don’t think there’s a plan to continue the phone service,” Elkins said.

Hummert said Friday that a task force would begin meeting soon to discuss KU Info’s future. She said some resources may be redirected to the Internet, but administrators also have the option of using increased tuition money to expand phone hours and services.

“I really don’t see we’d totally eliminate telephone access,” Hummert said.

Either way, a student group  dubbed “Save KU Info”  has organized, saying the service is worth keeping despite university budget cuts. The group gathered 800 signatures in four hours Friday at the Kansas Union.

Administrators started the KU Info service in 1970, in part to provide rumor control on campus. Two to three staff members now answer calls from 9 a.m. to 11 p.m. on weekdays and from noon to 11 p.m. on weekends.

Hours have been scaled back through the years, in part because of budget cuts. It was a 24-hour service until 1992. The phone portion of the service now has a $32,000 annual budget.

Brian Thomas, a Plano, Tex., junior, said he wasn’t surprised the possible elimination of KU Info had been the talk of campus since plans to cut it surfaced in the past week.

“It’s pretty much one of the most-used student services on campus, and it’s the most recognized,” he said. “It’s one of the few things left on campus that’s really worth keeping and fighting for.”

An Internet site could never replace personal communication on the phone, Thomas said.

“The services proposed for online do not match up with what’s provided by KU Info,” he said. “And most of the time, students aren’t around a computer anyway.”

Galen Turner, a Lawrence senior, said he’d learned the value of the phone service during his time as a KU Info employee.

“When people show up on campus, they don’t know what’s going on, especially during the first week of class,” he said. “We work as rumor control. We build up a certain amount of trust, and when crises happen on campus, students call us.”