The University who cried "Fire!"

As you may have noticed by the time stamp on this post, it is still before noon. What could I possibly be writing about, you ask yourself. Oh there is so much to say I hope I remember it all...

In Scotland there aren't RAs or CCs or anything like that. The people in charge of the residences are called Wardens. There's a head warden and then five or so assistant wardens. As my grandparents pointed out, it makes it sound a lot like a prison. Add to that that my dorm actually looks like a prison and it is kind of a weird feeling.

They do this weird thing here where they test the fire alarms at 11:15 EVERY TUESDAY. But instead of making the alarms go off once or twice, they do it for a good half an hour. Imagine six-second bursts of a high-pitched wail for thirty minutes. Not fun at all. Also not fun when you think that it is actually some weird type of fire alarm and start to leave. I ended up asking one of the women who works in the cleaning department (yeah, our rooms get cleaned daily) if it was a real alarm. Her response: "Are you new here? Ah, well, they do this every f*&$ing Tuesday. So if the alarm sounds for more than six seconds, get out, but other than that try to ignore it." Try to ignore the fire alarm that is supposed to wake sleeping college students. Good joke. Really, you made me laugh.

I've started to plan my Tuesdays around this annoying 11:15 ritual. I actually only have a half an hour to finish this up and leave.

Anyway, today I was sleeping (duh) and was planning on getting up sometime between 10 and 10:30. I don't have classes today, and really wanted to be able to get a lot of sleep. Clearly, someone out there hates me, as the loud and annoying fire alarm went off at 7. That hour of the morning isn't awful, but us college students like to pretend it doesn't exist. In fact, a lot of us make it our goal to never see this hour of the morning. Guess that goal won't be reached. Let me tell you, though, that 7AM is a lot worse when there is no light outside. For all I knew it could have been 3AM.

Turns out this alarm was a drill. I was informed of this by a happy looking warden pointing for us to exit from the fire escape door. Oh joy! I have also come to learn that this is a St. Andrew's ritual - an early morning fire alarm at the beginning of EVERY SINGLE SEMESTER. If I was mathematically inclined, I would try to calculate how many hours of the loud, annoying alarm I will hear during my time here. Now, I understand the value of running a fire drill, I really do. It is important to know where the fire exits are and how to get out of a building, especially one as confusing as my dorm. But, I do take extreme issue with making us stand outside in the cold for 30 minutes.

If a college kid can't figure out that a loud, annoying alarm means to get out of the building, well then they shouldn't be in college. Ok, maybe they passed out drunk, so checks of the rooms should be done. But we should not have to do what they made us do. Apparently I missed the memo that said we were all going back to kindergarten, because we were forced to line up single-file by floor and give our number to one of the assistant wardens. Keep in mind that the wardens knew this drill was going to happen and were properly prepared with socks, hats, gloves and heavy jackets. Once all the rooms were checked off, they went back inside to have a little warden conference, while we were left standing outside in the cold. Really not cool.

Solution? Do the drill at 9AM, when students are going to be less hostile about being woken up at an early hour. Since doors can't be left open during a fire alarm, distribute some sort of sign or something to hang off a door when we evacuate our rooms. In the case of a drill, this is a quick way to make sure that a student is out of his room. In the event of a real fire, this wouldn't matter much anyway. I think that fire safety and knowing what to do in the event of an emergency are are both important. But I also think that St. Andrew's has cried "wolf" one too many times. Back at Colgate if the alarm went off I was out of bed and out the door in about 15 seconds. Today I hesitated - a lot. I turned on the light, grabbed my jacket and tried to find some shoes. I even made sure to grab my keys and grab my cell phone from across the room. As I started to leave, I didn't see anyone else in the halls, so I hesitated again. In fact, I was among the first wave of students to come outside. People were still coming out significantly after me. In the event of a real fire, we might all run, but the hesitation and uncertainty with which we left the building is not a good habit for us to develop. I really hope they decide not to test the alarms at 11:15 today, since we had a lovely demonstration of their workability at 7 this morning.