False alarms

I don't think I mentioned this in my last entry, but on Monday I got a call back from The Hawk Eye. They offered me a full-time, paid internship for the summer!

Nothing else is new, really. Except there's been fire drills on campus every night this week and last night was the first one in Frances. I was just starting to fall sound asleep at around 3:15 when the head RA who lives on my floor came into my room and told me to get up because the fire alarm had been set off. I wouldn't have minded it so much if I hadn't already gotten in bed. Part of the reason I went to bed so late was because I was afraid I'd just be rudely awakened by alarms...and what do you know, it happened.

People from Claudius and EMR were running wild when their alarms went off around 1:30...I heard them screaming and running around in the rain, mud wrestling, boogey-boarding in the trench in front of Towers. Security was chasing them all over the place. Some guy slipped and fell into the landing outside Chick-Fil-A and the Internet Cafe...not down the stairs. He literally fell over the side. He spent the rest of the night in the hospital. I haven't heard much more about what happened to him.

The alarms went off in Michael as well...twice. By 3:15, when our alarms went off, it was no longer pouring down rain. But most of us stayed in the Fishbowl lobby. The Fishbowl roof was leaking big-time and there were huge puddles in the hall. Some of us slipped and almost fell, myself included. After about 10 minutes they let us come back down the hall and then stopped us around the Susie elevators and a security guard spent about 10 or 15 minutes more yelling at us. This guy is a retired firefighter and so you can imagine all the horror stories and scenarios he used to try to scare us. He barked at us to hang up and turn off our cell phones and warned us of the consequences of pulling a fire alarm...begged us to turn in whoever was responsible if we knew who's been behind all of this. He was so angry, I thought he'd never let up.

Trust me, if I knew who was behind all of this, I'd have no reservations about snitching on them. Because this is ridiculous. Rumor has it that this will continue every night until the end of the semester, and that they'll do it half an hour later each time. It's a darn good thing for me that I only have one final and a final sketch left. I feel sorry for those who still have a ton of finals and papers; this fire alarm business is really disruptive and immature. It was funny the first night, but not anymore. RAs in Claudius got word of last night's alarms, knew what time it was gonna happen and everything.

The alarms have been tripped in Susie and Wesley as well this week but they didn't get set off last night. Gabby hasn't had any issues yet, but that's not surprising.

You would think security would have been more vigilant after the first night...it happened almost simultaneously in Claudius and EMR. I doubt that whoever is doing it will ever get caught...supposedly they're not even pulling the alarms, just setting off smoke alarms in their rooms. So this could go on for awhile. Meantime, the rest of us will keep getting yelled at and treated like criminals.

I guess I'll be sleeping with one eye open tonight.