Page 162 - ThePhoenix1993-94

• Editorial The Phoenix Oh, It's Just Another False Alarm! 1500 copies every Other Thursday Editor-in Chief The alarm sounds. You roll over to S.A. Sommer '94 look at the clock. It reads 3:24 am. You know that you are supposed to evacuate Advertising Manager the building, but you also know that this is Sue Farrell '94 just another one of the seemingly endless Business Manager numberoffalse alarms pulled in your resi- Annan Latif '96 dence hall. So you roll over thinking to Layout Editor yourself that you risk being written up if TBA you don 'tget outof your warm bed and go News Editor outside into the cold night air. So you de- Stewart Bittel '95 On the Hill Editor cide to hide in your closet. RAs can't look Jenny Daino '95 in there; that violates your personal rights Photography Editor of privacy. Just as you 3fC pulling the door Gary Creighton '94 shut to your closet you hear a key tum in Sports Editor your lock. It's the RA checking to make Jay Hilbert '95 sure that everyone is out of their rooms. She doesn't see you pulling the closet door shut the rest of the way. You're safe. Or Cartoonists are you? Aaron Ablburn.Jeff Sharp General Starr What if the alarm had been a real fire? Carleen Alves. Pamela Barry, Tracie What if this time, it wasn't just someone the hall. It was over an hour before the ac- When the alann sounds, the RA on duty, Boggess, Virgil Cain, Lisa Hill, Mark pulling the alarm as a prank or a dare? All tual source of the smoke was discovered if the alann sounds during duty hours, Hughes, Joshua Foster, Scott Lee, those students who hid in their closets or and students could reenter the building. keys into all the rooms glancing quickly Robert Magee. Jonathan Nelson, Keith underneath tbeir beds would be dead. What if this had occurred in a larger for people who have not yet evacuated. If Rcmo. Dan Schaeffer, Annelise Dead because they no longer take fire building without glass windows through there are other RA<; in the building, they Sullivan, Eric Whitehair alarms seriously and dead because the which the smoke was easily visible? What are supposed to assist in this process. Photography Stair college's policy of merely keying into if this had been at 3:00 am? Thosepeople Many students will hide in their closets or Erich Wagner living in the basement apartments never Proofreaders rooms for aquick glance for bodies is irre- encountered the smoke at all, so they may under their beds, if there is room, to avoid Carleen Alves. Pamela Barry, sponsible. have assumed that it was a false alarm and evacuation. Tracie Boggess, Lisa Hill. Depending on where the tire is in a build- Suppose there were an actual fire. A ing, the RA or even CampusSafety may 001. remained inside, endangering their lives. quick glance around a room would not en- Faculty Advisor know if the alarm sounding is a false alarm People on this campus need to realize sure that there were no people left inside the TerryDalton or if there is an actual fire. Example: Last that puUing false fire alarms trivializes the burning building. Perhaps the RAs could semester ~ the Garden Apartments the fire significance of the alarm itself. People actually say something when they entered alarm went off. Everyone evacuated the who live in a building in which there are Perhaps they could ask as they are taking a building, luckily it was oo1y aboot 7:00 pm. many false alarms are less likely to re- quick glance around "Is there anybody in Campus Safety came to tum off the aIann spond to an alarm with seriousness than here?" Perhaps if people realized how dan- assuming thateither a student had pulleda are people who live in buildings where fire gerous itis to remain imide when a firealarm The Phoenix is published bi- false alarm or that someone burning din- alarms are rare thing. Frequency can de- sounds, they will evacuate. weekly. The opinions expressed do ner had accidently set off the entire sys- sensitize people. What is it going to take to make not necessarily represent those of The tem. Neither was the case. The washing Even more dangerous and irrespon- people more aware? Let's just hope that Phoenix staff, the faculty, or the ad- machine on tbe second level had over- sible than pulling the false alarms is the it doesn't take students dying in real ministrators of WMC heated and had begun to spew smoke into college's policy regarding fife alarms. fire. The paper welcomes freelance submissions on Macintosh disks in most word processor formats. The editor reserves the right to edit for • Pelspectille clarity, length and libel and to publish What We Believe as space permits. All submissions (excluding self-addressed diskettes) become the property of The Phoenix This Is Our Sacred Duty! and cannot be returned. Please include a name and phone number for verification. Names will The United Staes was ben a nation of truest sense of the word to ibose compeUedto lems when a crisis occurs, at which point we be withheld only by the discretion of great promise. Her fCltJfrlers were sb.lJentsof laOOr while his fairer coumepat pursued a decide our workls are too diverse andsepara- the Editor-in-Chief. the Enlightenment, so itis no surprise that rte life-stylewith mOO!leisure. ism by choice is the ooly answer. Or petaps The Phoenix does not discrimi- Decla:rntionoflndependenceand the Cmsti- But America was still the "home of the the better path would be to find commoo groundandcrnphasizeiL Wemustsetaplace nate based on age, race, religion, gen- tution reflect a special enoaoe about Free- brave." Brave rren and women rose with at the ban::(uet table f