AU's south side is notorious for its fire alarms, the most recent one was early Monday morning around 3 a.m. Students are frustrated that their sleep is interrupted, and rightfully so, but the administration is more upset that students are choosing not to exit Anderson, Letts, and Centennial, which seems all together very backward.
In order to combat studens sleeping through fire alarms, the school wants to start fining offenders up to $500 for skipping an alarm.
While we do not condone ignoring fire alarms, it is understandable why so many students do it. It is like the boy who cried wolf. The alarms have gone off so many times, say for a Red Sox win or due to an ornery student. It makes more sense to aggressively seek the actual culprits of the pranks, rather than the innocent students who have to suffer the consequences of others' actions.
Besides pranks, a faulty alarm system is partly to blame. Not only is this just plain unsafe, what student is going to take alarms seriously when so many are triggered by a crossed wire somewhere?
Students, please take alarms seriously, and Housing and Dining, please seek the real culprits and not just ways to cover AU for insurance purposes.
