The phone rings. It’s the tell-tale double off-campus ring. Maybe it’s the student’s loving mother or father.

But for many Iowa State students an ominous click greets them or worse, a unknown voice and a harassing message.

Several students have experienced this unpleasant reality since the start of the semester.

One student said the calls started coming about two days after he moved in this fall.

He asked not to be identified because the incidents have stopped and he didn’t want to provide an reason for their renewal.

He said the first few calls were just a ring followed by an immediate hang-up, but one day it was worse.

The call came at about 7 a.m., and he said he heard much more than a click when he picked up the receiver.

“They were saying sexual things like, ‘I want to suck your cock,'” he said.

“I went to [the Department of Public Safety] DPS, but they couldn’t really do too much, because [the call] was coming from off campus,” he said.

DPS told him off-campus calls are harder to trace.

Lt. Doug Clabaugh, of DPS, said there are several tactics for investigating phone harassment.

“Telecommunications can obtain numbers for where the call originates, or we can use an answering machine to record the voice,” Clabaugh said. “Worst-case scenario, we switch numbers.”

The number of harassing calls is down this year from other years, Clabaugh said. He did not explain why there were less calls this year, but he mentioned one reason for some of the calls.

“What happens a lot, especially in the early part of the year, is people go by last year’s phone book,” Clabaugh said, “and then people have moved out of their apartment or dorm.”

He said many callers just hang up when they discover they have called the wrong number.

The student who received the early morning call said the voice sounded like a white male, but he did not have any ideas about who it could have been.

The student added that he hadn’t had any trouble with fellow students.

He said he is glad the calls have stopped. “Getting that type of call in the morning, right before you go to class, that really bothers you,” he said.

Brooke Lukes, a freshman in sociology, said she has also received calls where the caller would hang up immediately when the phone was picked up.

Lukes said the calls “started the day I arrived, and nobody knew I was going to be here because I didn’t think I was going to be here until the next day.”

She said one call was different from all the others.

“They asked if I was home, using my full name, and then they said, ‘Well, Brooke Lukes, this is … ‘ and then they hung up,” she said.

Lukes said she didn’t recognize the caller, but she said “it was a male voice and it wasn’t very dark or deep.”

Two other students, both female, also reported to DPS they had received harassing phone calls.

Brooks Morse, staff psychologist at Student Counseling Services, said calling DPS is the right thing to do.

“I would encourage [victims of harassing calls] to go to DPS so they could see about protecting themselves,” she said.

Morse said students who are the targets of phone harassment shouldn’t blame themselves.

“It’s a form of victimization, having one’s privacy violated. It can feel pretty intrusive,” she said.

“Some people minimize it, ignore it or think they’re over-reacting.”

Morse suggested silence and hanging up as proper responses to unwanted calls, because they will deny the harasser “reinforcement” for his or her actions.

“It’s hard to just hang up because [victims] want to figure out why the harasser is doing it and what they want,” Morse said.

She said students who are bothered by harassment should get help.