Student chefs cause more fire alarms

Ariel Schwartz Assistant News Editor

Students living on campus have experienced an inordinate number of false fire alarms this year. According to Associate Director of Security Kim Squillace, students cooking cause a majority of the false alarms.

The alarms have become a major annoyance for many students. Main resident Erin James ’07 said, “They keep happening at night, and I wake up tired the next day.”

The frequency of the alarms has caused some students to ignore them. Cushing resident Cameron Laue ’07 said, “I usually ignore them because they’re all false alarms…someday I’m going to be burned to a crisp, I know.”

Main President Rachel Zoghlin ’07 concurred with Laue. “In the case of a real emergency, we want to make sure all students exit the building safely, but amidst so many false alarms, I think students are increasingly deterred from taking them seriously…as a result, students may be put in grave danger,” she said.

According to Assistant Director of Residential Life Rich Horowitz, the Office of Residential Life has been working hard to eliminate false alarms on campus since the beginning of the semester. They met with all students identified in a campus security report as having been responsible for a false alarm. The meetings serve to confirm whether an intentional violation of a campus regulation occurred in the incident

As a result of the meetings, Horowitz discovered that the new carbon monoxide detectors in the Town Houses were going off when bumped. The matter was quickly addressed by Buildings and Grounds. “As a result, I haven’t seen a carbon monoxide false alarm in over two months,” reported Horowitz.

“I’ve met personally with dozens of students this semester regarding false alarms,” Horowitz said. “I would like to think that these meetings have been somewhat responsible for the very low rate of recidivism with false alarms. The meetings have also been helpful for the Office of Residential Life.”