Norwich administrators back fire drill protocols

By Kara Swarbrick
Norwich Guidon Staff Writer

It's 2 a.m. The fire alarm is going off in the dormitories, and all the students in the building shuffle outside, sleepy-eyed and cranky, forced into the cold night air by their residence hall advisors (RAs). The RAs, who are students, themselves, then turn around and go back into the building.

This is a typical scene during a fire alarm in the civilian dormitories on the Norwich University campus. According to Ara Banks, director of residence life and a member of the Norwich Safety Committee, resident advisors and the resident director (RD), students in most cases, are asked, but not required, to stay in the building to find out where the alarm is being set off and if there are any students who have not yet vacated the building.

"They stay in the building basically to make sure that other people have exited," said Banks. "I should also say that we're not the only university that does this. I've worked at other schools, and it's always done in this way."

Iphy Tanguay, the RD of Patterson Hall at Norwich, said that the procedures laid out by the university for the evacuation of the dormitories are what keep order during the confusion of a fire alarm.

"We have our procedures in place because without them it would be chaos," said Tanguay. "You wouldn't know how to go about what you need to do."

But the issue of the RAs' safety still raises questions about this method and how successful it is.

"This issue did come up before, and the answer that I got at the safety committee [meeting] was that in the event of a non-fire situation, because they are Norwich employees, we can request their services," Banks said. "We can't demand, and we make sure they are well trained."

"In the event of a real fire, they are not required to stay in the building," according to Tanguay. "None of us are. Their safety is important, and we've never told them they can't leave the building."

The RAs, RDs and ranking members of the cadet corps all go through fire training each year, regardless of whether or not they have already gone through it before, according to Banks.

"In the event that there is an actual fire, in the training they are instructed to leave," said Banks.

On the corps side, much of the same routine is followed, except that it is ranking corps members that clear students out of their rooms instead of RAs.

"The RAs and the cadre do the exact same thing," said Michael Abraham, chief of security/safety. "It's under a different name; you've got students that take responsibility for others, and you've got cadets that take responsibility for others, and they clear the floor."

While the cadets who hold rank are asked to perform the same responsibilities as the university-employed RAs, they are not listed as employees.

"They are looked at as agents of the university, not as employees," said Abraham. "But while they're not employees, they do act and should be acting in the best interest of the university."

The lives of the RAs, RDs and corps officers are not viewed as less valuable than those of regular students, but "they've basically volunteered, because of their responsibility, as saying 'I want to be an RA,' to help in those situations," according to Tanguay. "But we're also smart enough to know that they need to get out, and they know that, too."

According to Abraham, the danger during a fire alarm is the uncertainty of what the potential problem is.

"Anything that sets off a fire alarm has the potential for being dangerous," according to Abraham. "When the RAs, the cadre members, or any of my security people first go into the building, they don't know that [it is not a real fire] for sure. That is why we say to all of our people, 'if you see the problem and you see or smell smoke, you just exit the building and let the fire department handle the problem.'"

Tanguay expressed faith in the university's guidance for the responsible students.

"I believe in our system," Tanguay said. "Ara Banks has been told by the insurance company of this university that they're impressed with what we do, because it's better than any other university that they've been at."

So where does this leave the students, who are standing outside in the cold? Banks said she worries that too many choose to stay in their rooms when they think it is just another false alarm, and it could cost them their lives.

"What I don't want to happen is what happened at Seton Hall, where so many fire alarms and so many things happened that people just didn't listen to the alarms and ended up dying when there finally was a real fire," Banks said.

"We have to treat every single fire alarm like it's the real thing," said Tanguay. "It's just for the students' own safety that we make them do these things."

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