Two minutes before 4 a.m. on Saturday, Nov. 16, a hellish cacophony of fire alarms drove dozens of Dascomb residents out of their beds, onto the cold, wet pavement outside. Within the next 10 minutes, fire alarms were blaring in Talcott, South and Price. At 5:03 a.m., a fifth alarm sounded in Asia House.
“By that happening, [Security] figured it had to be someone pulling them,” Director of Residential Life for South Campus Kevin Williams said. “They started asking around.”
Within three hours, they had found a suspect, by searching through the records of ID card swipers in the affected buildings.
“One particular individual was found to have been in all the buildings during the time of the fire alarm,” Director of Safety and Security Robert Jones said.
That student confessed to pulling all of the alarms, except for the one in Dascomb. According to Williams, the student claimed to have been motivated by boredom. A second student was found to have pulled the alarm in Dascomb.
Jones could not recall any similar events. “Nothing as in-depth as four or five [dorms] at the same time,” he said.
“A large number of students were put into a panic,” Williams said, estimating that over 400 students were directly affected.
Student reactions ranged from apathy to vivid revenge fantasies.
“It’s such a cheap trick that doesn’t require an ounce of brain power,” said junior Tom Hoberg, a Dascomb resident assistant.
“It was annoying that I had to go out at that hour, but fire alarms happen,” said first-year Megan Highfill, a resident of Harvey House, which was also evacuated as a result of the alarm in Price.
“We take the pulling of fire alarms very seriously, because it places students potentially in enormous jeopardy,” said Dean of Students Peter Goldsmith. “The fire trucks could be in one place when the real fire is somewhere else.”
“Oberlin has a volunteer fire department, and not a huge [firefighting] staff,” Williams said. He noted that all of the city’s fire trucks were in front of Dascomb when the second alarm went off in Talcott.
The alarm-pullers will likely face serious consequences for their actions. According to Oberlin’s Rules and Regulations, the penalty for pulling a false alarm in one dorm is a $300 fine, plus probation. Because one of the students pulled alarms in four dorms, he could face a combined fine of $1,200.
Although this student committed a felony, the City of Oberlin has decided not to press criminal charges. “This person could have been charged criminally, but I think the fire chief decided he would let the College handle it through our process,” Jones said.
That fate will be decided at a hearing before a College “community board,” composed of faculty and students. Williams expects the hearing to occur sooner rather than later, because “it’s a life-safety issue.”
Jones and Williams both felt that their respective departments — ResLife for Williams, and Safety and Security for Jones — had handled the situation well.
However, Williams feels that there are ways that the College could be better prepared for similar situations in the future.
For example, he said that there should be someone to address the assembled masses of students before they return to their rooms, explaining what caused the alarms to go off.
He also feels that the alarms in some locations need to be louder. Some students interviewed for this article reported that they could barely hear the alarms.
According to Jones and Williams, a substantial number of students never left their buildings, which could have had tragic repercussions in the case of an actual fire.
“Our concern is that people evacuate the building,” he said. “Students don’t take fire alarms seriously.”
“When something like that continues, it causes people to disregard the alarms, and you’ll come to a situation when there’s a fire and no one evacuates the building,” Jones said.