Following a recent spate of late-night fire alarms in Keeney Quadrangle, residents and administrators have been searching for a cause for the inconvenience. A Residential Life investigation indicates that, contrary to the belief of many residents, students did not cause the alarms.
On Friday, Sept. 9, at around 4 a.m., a fire alarm, probably the result of an electrical malfunction, forced all of the approximately 600 Keeney residents to evacuate the dorm. Another alarm at 3:30 a.m. on Sept. 11 and a third at 1:30 a.m. on Sept. 12 resulted in similar evacuations.
Residents of Keeney, most of whom were sleeping at the time of the first alarm, expressed dismay.
"I'm an athlete and sleep is very important to me," said Finn Yarbrough '09, a distance runner on the men's cross country and track teams who lives on the third floor of Mead House. "I had a workout the next morning."
By the second alarm, Yarbrough's frustration had reached a new level.
"The first time was alarming and disruptive," Yarbrough said. "When I woke up and realized this was happening again, I opened the door to my room and let out a primal scream."
Ben Donahue '09, who lives on the ground floor of Mead, also felt inconvenienced by the alarms.
"We were revolving dorm life around the alarms," Donahue said. He further added he went to sleep expecting to be awakened.
Rumors about the alarms' cause spread quickly around Keeney. Many students assumed the alarms were triggered by students smoking in their rooms or pulling the alarm as a prank.
A typed letter appeared on a Mead bulletin board, begging fellow residents to stop pulling the alarm so everyone could get their sleep. Students highlighted the letter and added their own comments to show support for the writer.
Yarbrough and 17 other Keeney residents even formed a group to prevent fire alarms, calling themselves the "Keeney Death Squad." Yarbrough said that every night, he and the other members of the group take turns patrolling the ends of the hallways to make sure no one can come near the fire alarms.
But the fire alarms were almost certainly the result of electrical problems, said Associate Director of Housing and Residential Life Thomas Forsberg. They were not "malicious or accidental" alarms, according to the Fire Safety Office.
If an alarm goes off because a resident pulls it or sets it off with smoke, the resident is subject to a $1,000 fine and possible disciplinary action. Even when the Department of Public Safety never apprehends the specific perpetrator, a report is still filed, and sometimes, according to the Residential Life Web site, the entire building or unit may be billed.
But Forsberg said he would have seen any police reports filed after the recent alarms.
"I saw no report indicating an alarm at a pull station with a student involved," Forsberg said.
Rather, Forsberg explained, DPS and ResLife began conducting an investigation of possible electrical malfunctions within the Keeney alarm system.
"Since there haven't been any alarms in a week, I'd assume they found the problem and fixed it," Forsberg said.
Keeney residents are re-adjusting to uninterrupted nights.
"Now we don't have to go to bed fully dressed," Donahue said.
