Here’s a piece of Auburn trivia many current students and recent alumni don’t know: The Foy Information Desk – the place where before Google you could ask the time, temperature or how many Oreos it would take to make a chain to the moon – is still in operation after more than 70 years. And it’s still responding to crazy queries and common questions.

The unique and entertaining information desk that has been mentioned in the past by Oprah and The Today Show is no longer housed in Foy Student Union. After the new Melton Student Center was built in 2008, the old Union was renamed Foy Hall and the Foy Information Desk moved into Melton.

The telephones at the desk are answered by students. In the days before Google, other students would call and ask everything from how long to boil an egg to song lyrics to how Auburn stood in the football rankings. With the advent of the internet, the Foy Info Desk would seem to be obsolete or, at the very least, redundant.

Not so, says student employee Stacy Stevens, a senior who happened to answer the phone when AL.com called to ask a burning question: Does the Foy Info Desk still get calls on odd topics?

“Yes!” Stevens said. “We get several odd calls every shift.” She recalled one caller who worried her: “A person called to ask how rock climbers get down when they reach the top. I told him about rappelling, helicopters and other options and he hung up.”

A little while later the person called back and asked how to rig rappelling equipment. “I wondered if he was calling from the side of a mountain,” Stevens said. “I hope I gave him the information he needed!”

The workers also get questions about topics that are typically readily available online. For example, sometimes people call to get current sports scores when they don’t have internet access. Religious groups whose members are allowed to use phones but not internet call frequently, Stevens said. Pranksters still like to call to try to trip up desk workers.

For pre-internet students, a common refrain was “Let’s call Foy.” But these days the desk does not receive many calls from students who have cooking and laundry questions or who need to know where to find books and supplies. That’s not only due to the internet but because, Stevens says, the desk is better known around the world than locally.

“We’re known around the globe but here in Auburn a lot of people don’t know about us,” she said.

How the Info Desk began

The Foy Information Desk was started in the early 1950s by Dr. James Edgar Foy (1916-2010), Auburn’s longtime dean of students.

Dean Foy’s initial idea was to provide a service that would help students who needed information on class schedules or university services. It quickly gained popularity and was eventually extended into a 24-hour service available to anyone who called 334-844-4244, which is still the number. (Student tip: Best remembered as 3, 3, Foy-8, Foy, Foy-Foy, 2, Foy, Foy.)

Students who answer the phones are required to attempt to find an answer for every caller. The information line was featured in Oprah Winfrey’s O Magazine, which led to the spot on The Today Show. During the 2007 segment, host Matt Lauer called Foy. He asked a student named Hannah the full name of the Barbie doll. Hannah put Matt on hold for a moment but returned with the answer: Barbara Millicent Roberts.

Adam Glassman, creative director for O Magazine, said of the service, “Basically, it was the original Google.”

Students who staff the desk use the internet and research books to answer questions, including random ones like “How many bricks are in Haley Center?” The students also have a database for trivia and commonly asked questions, like “How many marshmallows would it take to fill Jordan-Hare Stadium?”

About James Foy

In an interview for the 2010 book Hidden History of Auburn, Foy’s daughter, Susan Foy Spratling, said that friends and family who attended college at Tulane, Tuscaloosa and Vanderbilt told her that students on those campuses who couldn’t find the answer to a question would also say, “I don’t know. Let’s call Foy.”

Foy, who would become an Auburn icon, graduated from the University of Alabama. His family said he worked five jobs while earning his undergraduate degree, including delivering the Saturday Evening Post and working as a butcher at the A&P grocery store.

Interestingly, one of Foy’s greatest contributions to the state came when he was an undergraduate student at the University of Alabama. As president of the college’s chapter of Omicron Delta Kappa, he organized a Better Relations Day between Auburn and Alabama and pushed to resume an annual football game between the rivals, according to the Birmingham News. The teams stopped playing over a minor conflict in 1907. In 1948, the games resumed, later to be called the Iron Bowl. That’s why the official name of the Iron Bowl trophy, bestowed each year on the winner, is the James E. Foy-Omicron Delta Kappa Sportsmanship Trophy.

Foy, who had served as a fighter pilot in the US. Navy in World War II and was awarded the Air Medal for Meritorious Service, was Dean of Students at Auburn from 1952 to 1978.