Joined: 6/13/2006
Posts: 3300
Location: Massachussetts, USA
This morning, for the second time in a row in the freshmen dorms some shmuck pulled the Fire alarm, causing everyone to evacuate and stand outside from 3-4 in the morning. All 5 freshmen buildings have been hit more than once, sometimes on the same night. Last time it happened at my building it was 30 degress outside, with 10 windchill. If anyone else has had similar problems and wants to vent their frustration at ridicolously stupid college students who do this for kicks, vent away here.
This used to happen aaalll the time in high school because were were in the same building as the industry cantine and shared the same fire alarm. I guess they burned things in the kitchen.
Since it was only during school time, it was sometimes a welcome break.
In my dorm in Japan, the main fire alarm went off randomly. We weren't forced to go out or anything, but the sound was extremely annoying and just WOULDN'T STOP, so after a few times I just went ahead and disconnected it. You could do that too. Not too good if there actually is a fire though...
That, or mount a webcam to catch the perpetrator and report him.
I've experiences my own share of issues with fire alarms.
Both Junior and Senior year in High School, there were 2 "spurts" of people sitting off the alarm...it happened maybe 10 times in about 2 1/2 weeks each time. We'd start making mental pets on what period it would happen in the next day.
In college, some schmuck lit fire to one of the elevator buttons in one of the towers of my dorm building. Apparently, it melted the plastic, which singed the wires in the panel, and set the whole panel on fire. This was like, 2 am too. No one was hurt or anything; we just had to wait in the cold for over an hour before they decided to finally open up the student center to let us hang in so we wouldn't freeze.
Not long after, some drunken idiots poor water on one of the alarms, which set it off...at 3 in the morning. But wait, it gets better. The thing went off AGAIN at 5 am, as a result of a short circit or something like that. Some poor people had finals that morning too, but it was for the weekend classes, thankfully.
That happened 4 times in a row when I was in a dorm... on freaking FINALS WEEK. It was all because of a stupid frat that was having its initiation trials.
Joined: 8/1/2004
Posts: 2687
Location: Seattle, WA
feitclub wrote:
Do they have those fire-alarm-alarms? The ones that go off if you open them to actually set off the fire alarm?
Uhh, they have a little sensor that tells the fire department when which alarm is pulled, but its not like a little whining alarm goes off when someone only completes the first part of pulling the alarm.
Luckily for me, my freshmen dorms only had 39 people in them, so it would be insanely easy to tell who had pulled the fire alarm and kick their ass. Now that I'm off campus, the only alarm I care about is when the neighbors toss a hot pan under running water, creating steam that sets off their smoke detectors. It's only happened twice, but hey.
the only thing here is the people who live under me like playing fucking loud music till 2 am every night and i have classes at 8:30am heh... a few times they kept at it till 6am
CtrlAltDestroy wrote:
That happened 4 times in a row when I was in a dorm... on freaking FINALS WEEK. It was all because of a stupid frat that was having its initiation trials.
if this happened here there would be a few stabbing-induced deaths the following day (most people in this dorm are in pre-med except the retards i mentionned that live below me) and we are only ~40 in the building
My dorms fire alarm broke one night, about 3-4 in the morning, so we all run outside, wait, come back in......and it goes off AGAIN, run outside, wait, come back in, goes off AGAIN, im pretty sure 99% of the people said fuck it and went back to sleep(thats what i did)
Joined: 3/11/2004
Posts: 1058
Location: Reykjavík, Ísland
When I was in (the equivalent of) high school, during one crazy month, some schmucks kept blowing up fireworks in the school. Yes, inside the school. The fire alarm went off twice in one day, but it was OK because the weather was very good and it was actually nice to get out of class for once. I think it even came on the news once. Although I may have just dreamt that part. But yeah. Some teenagers are idiots. And even some supposedly grown-up people are idiots.
Yep, gotta love those dumbasses who set off roman candles in the stairwell at 2 in the morning, in the middle of October, during the week that we've already had two fire alarms already, so that the rest of us have to freeze our asses off for almost 2 hours while the fire department clears smoke from the building.
My dorms fire alarm broke one night, about 3-4 in the morning, so we all run outside, wait, come back in......and it goes off AGAIN, run outside, wait, come back in, goes off AGAIN, im pretty sure 99% of the people said fuck it and went back to sleep(thats what i did)
We had something similar happen at the old place that our company used to work at. However, that fire alarm was not the sort of thing you could sleep through. Heck, you couldn't even work...
Large schools need to write clauses into their housing agreement so that prank-pulling a fire alarm causes instant termination with no refunds.
Because in many places, prank-pulling the fire alarm at night is a good way to cause frostbite to a large portion of the student body.
How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.
Joined: 8/1/2004
Posts: 2687
Location: Seattle, WA
upthorn wrote:
Large schools need to write clauses into their housing agreement so that prank-pulling a fire alarm causes instant termination with no refunds.
Because in many places, prank-pulling the fire alarm at night is a good way to cause frostbite to a large portion of the student body.
There are many schools that do have a clause for falsely pulling the fire alarm. Since every false alarm costs the school a lot of money in fines, people caught doing it face fines and detention/suspension/probation/expulsion, depending on where/when/why. I know that a girl at a local HS was expelled because she tried to get out of each and every one of her tests by pulling the fire alarm 5 minutes before classes started.
I remember one time last year when someone pulled a fire alarm at like 3:00 AM. It was a Saturday morning, which normally wouldn't have been so bad, but I had a practice MCAT that day. On top of that, the security/fire people decided to let us stay out for a bit longer than normal because we had had some other instances of that happening. At least, I think that's why it took so long. Or maybe that was the time someone on the second or third floor managed to turn on the sprinkler in his/her (I think it was a girl) room.
Is class attendance mandatory in the US? Here it's voluntary, so that rule seems strange. (I assume you mean college/university, since you said professor.)
And oh yeah, fire alarms: they still suck. On topic.
Wasn't "mandatory" at my school, but professors could count attendance into a grade, give a pop quiz if few people showed up, etc. Normally if the professor was late by more than about 10 minutes everyone would leave and assume that the professor wouldn't do anything - normally they would just apologize about being late but the occasional professor would give a 'pop quiz' and just fail everybody on it - bastards.
Is class attendance mandatory in the US? Here it's voluntary, so that rule seems strange. (I assume you mean college/university, since you said professor.)
It depends on the professor. Most tend to have attendance policies, though.
Let me rephrase the myth: If a professor doesn't show up 15 minutes after a class has started, you can leave and will not be counted absent regardless of attendance policy.
One time there was a fire drill... and so they evacuated. It was a real drill BUT:
They were mixing chemicals in the lab. So while everyone was outside, the chemicals burst into flames, and JUST as we went in the drill went off. They put out the fire, but everyone was out for like an hour in freezing weather (It was december, in Canada).
