[ Golden Gater Online - December 4, 1997 ]
Leslie Fulbright Cruz
Staff writer
Anyone caught pulling fire alarms in the New Humanities Building on Tuesday nights will have to deal with the University Police Department, which is determined to find the mastermind behind the false alarms.
But if someone is caught, they will have to deal with the wrath of both the UPD and students and faculty, who have been left in the cold -- literally -- for five to 10 minutes while authorities checked the building after each alarm on Tuesday nights.
The fire alarms have sounded as many as five times on Tuesday nights since the beginning of the semester. After responding to so many false alarms and hearing students and faculty complain about the incidents, UPD has decided to post officers throughout the building in an effort to catch someone trying to yank an alarm.
Although the false alarms have been going off since the first Tuesday night class meeting, Amalia Borja, spokeswoman for the UPD, said the problem has grown worse in the past month. The alarms have been pulled several times in two different locations in the New Humanities Building, although Borja said she couldn't recall which two locations.
Tuesday nights have not been the only false fire alarm incidents this semester. Wednesday, the building was evacuated for 15 minutes around 2 p.m. for a false alarm. The number of false fire alarms have led some to believe they are being caused not by a perpetrator, but by a malfunction.
C.J. Smallwood, who teaches a social work class on the first floor on Tuesday nights, said she "smells electrical burning" when the alarms go off. Still, Borja said she is confident that "someone is pulling it" rather than it being some kind of electrical problem.
"We will use as many officers as we can afford until the problem is taken care of," Borja said.
If an individual is causing the false alarms, the person is usually trying to get attention, said sociology professor Michael Rustigan, who studies criminal behavior. He said about one-third probably want to just get out of class; another one-third are bored and become "intoxicated with a sense of power" by pulling the alarm; the other one-third are people who might hold a grudge against a professor over something like a bad grade.
Either way, everyone in the building on Tuesday nights has had to deal with the problem all semester. Tuesday night classes have become a nuisance for faculty and students, who have tromped up and down stairs several times during the evenings because of false fire alarms.
"The alarms have been very disruptive to my class," Smallwood said. She said that false alarms have been a problem since the New Humanities Building opened in the fall of 1994.
The issue has become such a bother that some professors have considered just letting their classes go. Even students, who normally want as many breaks as possible, are beginning to get annoyed at the fact that they have to leave the building several times throughout a three-hour class. Some just don't take the alarms seriously anymore.
Allison Nicholson, an SF State student, said that one time after several alarms went off in the same night, she tried to stay in the classroom but was "yelled at by a fireman" who told her she had to evacuate.
[ Golden Gater - December 4, 1997 ]