Unnecessary fire alarm pulls bring a hefty fine, and a few Row houses have felt the effects this year: During fall quarter, several houses, including Sigma Nu and Mars, had alarms pulled, each of which produced a $500 fine from Stanford.<\/p>\n
While some alarms are caused by late-night pranksters, the majority of the problems are caused by intoxicated partygoers who activate the alarms. Not only does this cause a fine, but it also breaks up the party as students are forced to evacuate.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt tends to happen at frat parties or parties at general,\u201d said Natasha Chu \u201810, a kitchen manager at Kairos House.<\/p>\n
Fire crews always respond to these alarms, but the fines are not handed out through the office of the University fire marshal. \u201cThis is not a policy of the fire marshal; this is a policy of the housing department,\u201d said Marshal Joseph Leung.<\/p>\n
Nate Boswell, associate dean of residential education and dean of the Row houses, independent living and Greek life, said the fines are on par with those given for tampering with fire extinguishers and sprinkler systems. He said he was aware of the occurrence of false fire alarm pulls.<\/p>\n
\u201cI do not have hard statistics and would hesitate to speculate,\u201d Boswell wrote in an e-mail to The Daily.\u00a0\u201cAnecdotally, alarms go off unnecessarily periodically throughout a given academic year and more often than not are the result of human rather than systems error.\u201d<\/p>\n
In order to avoid further problems, houses are taking steps to protect their fire alarms.\u00a0 While some smaller houses do not have to worry about as many guests, fraternities in particular have had to increase their vigilance of the alarms.<\/p>\n
Sigma Nu has instituted a policy of guarding its fire alarms during every party. Each resident chooses a shift, and every alarm is guarded for the duration of the event.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor the entire night . . . we all have shifts, and we have to leave the party to sit there and guard it for 45 minutes,\u201d said Eric Knudson \u201912, a Sigma Nu resident.<\/p>\n
The policy has been effective, and Sigma Nu has not had an alarm activation during any of its parties this year, The one alarm the fraternity had to deal with was caused instead by a late-night prank. Early in the morning, someone broke into their house and pulled the alarm.<\/p>\n
\u201cPersonally I think it\u2019s great when Stanford gets into its school spirit with these healthy rivalries \u2014 I love that,\u201d Knudson said. \u201cBut breaking into a house and pulling an alarm and making fire fighters come here at two o\u2019clock in the morning and making us pay all this money \u2014 it\u2019s not in anybody\u2019s interests.\u201d<\/p>\n
The story at Mars is similar, with its first fine related to a third-floor alarm that was pulled during an all-campus party in the early morning hours. Its second alarm activation was a break-in through the rear kitchen door.<\/p>\n
\u201cA resident in Columbae saw what happened,\u201d said Matt Sprague \u201910, financial manager for Mars. \u201cHe saw possibly two people dressed in black walk up to the back door, throw it open, pull it and sprint away.\u201d<\/p>\n
The resident reported seeing a similar event the night of the Sigma Nu fire alarm activation. Staff members at Mars have taken steps to permanently lock the rear door, as well as enforce stricter policies on the locking of exterior doors and windows.<\/p>\n
Particularly at Mars, some were disappointed that there was not a further investigation into the pranks in order to find the person responsible. Some had hoped that fingerprints could be taken to find the culprit and to discover the reason why the alarms were being activated.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know what really possesses people to pull it \u2014 it\u2019s just really shallow, short reasons . . . [It\u2019s] a brief amount of fun and screws people over in the long run,\u201d said David Geeter II \u201911, a Mars resident.<\/p>\n
Although the total of $1,000 in fines only accounts for roughly two percent of the Mars budget, the alarm incidents mean the house is spending money that was originally budgeted for other purposes.<\/p>\n
Boswell said a review process is in place to help houses whose alarms are pulled, despite those houses\u2019 own prevention efforts.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe University takes all alarms, legitimate or not, very seriously,\u201d Boswell said. \u201cBy default, houses such as Sigma Nu are responsible for regulating access to their building, and if an alarm is pulled, regardless of who pulls it, the house is generally fined.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf alarms are repeatedly pulled and a culprit cannot be identified or the house has been doing what it is supposed to \u2014 keeping doors and windows locked, monitoring guests, etc. \u2014 and someone broke in, then the house has an opportunity to file a police report and refute the fine through Student Housing.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Unnecessary fire alarm pulls bring a hefty fine, and a few Row houses have felt the effects this year: During fall quarter, several houses, including Sigma Nu and Mars, had alarms pulled, each of which produced a $500 fine from Stanford. While some alarms are caused by late-night pranksters, the majority of the problems are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-148815","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148815","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=148815"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148815\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=148815"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=148815"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=148815"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}