Fire safety inspections widened due to past violations

Juliana Kiyan Staff Writer

Vassar students receive e-mails each semester admonishing them for having unnecessary items in the dorm hallways. Residential Life insists that they have good reason for these reprimands.

Starting Feb. 13 and continuing for the rest of the week, the Office of Fire Prevention and Control (OFPC) will be conducting random fire safety inspections inside residence halls and throughout senior housing. “They’ve been in our houses, but never in the rooms before,” said Director of Residential Life Luis Inoa. “This year, they want to get a sense about how the rooms are.” Students do not have to be present for the inspections, added Inoa. “Our preference is if students are in the room. But [OFPC] will go into a room if a student isn’t here.”

The OFPC is authorized to inspect New York colleges annually to insure compliance with the fire code. While emphasis lies on restricting electrical appliances and ensuring working smoke detectors and sprinklers, the OFPC is free to check corridors for safety. The inspections by the OFPC result in a large amount of fines in colleges and universities across the country.

The new inspections were prompted by poor results for Vassar on previous OFPC inspections, according to Inoa. “If every student wants an ‘A’ at Vassar, we have not met that,” he said of his assement of campus fire safety awareness. “In my personal assessment, we would barely be passing. C minus.”

Inoa explained that the results of a bad “report card” for fire safety are fines.
“I think the state office has been good about working with us,” Inoa said. “The fines could have been excessive. This has been a year-long process…increasing communication with the fire safety people.”

The more stringent attitudes of fire safety officials also result from the fire that killed three students in a Seton Hall University residence hall in 2000. “We’ve been trying to keep students from putting their stuff in the halls for about two years for a number of reasons. A major one being in case of a fire, it is dark, because of the smoke, and when you’re trying to escape the worst thing that could happen would be tripping over someone’s shoes or bike,” said Lathrop and Jewett House Advisor Molly MacElroy.

New York State Fire Code stipulates that any obstruction of a public exit or access route is a violation of safety code. Inoa clarified the rules in an e-mail by telling students to remove items such as boots, throw rugs, and bicycles from corridors, stairs, and exit doors. These objects do not serve for the design of the building and therefore pose danger to residents in case of evacuation.

Despite the warning, many students continued to leave items in the hallway. During the winter months, wet boots and umbrellas are often left in the hall to dry off before bringing them into the room.

Josselyn and Davison House Advisor Michael Penwell noted, “It is important to take a proactive approach to this situation and remove any of these items to make sure that we never have to find out if there would be a problem evacuating.”