Alarms Prompt Dean’s E-mail

The incidence of one too many false fire alarms prompted Dean of the College Benedict H. Gross ’71 to send out a courteous but stern letter to undergraduates last week, reminding them that they could be expelled for tampering with fire safety equipment.

The day after Gross penned the letter, a prankster sprayed a fire extinguisher throughout Canaday D, leading to the evacuation of the building and forcing students in D entryway to sleep elsewhere for the night.

Although campus administrators state that the number of false alarms has not been abnormally high this year, a fair amount of controversy has surrounded recent incidents, stemming from miscommunication among students, administrators, and firefighters. Pranksters are at fault, but many students feel that the measures taken in response to the false alarms are less than fair to those who are uninvolved.

After an extinguisher was sprayed in Lowell basement during September, an entryway tutor claimed that, in retribution, the firefighters allowed the alarm to ring for half an hour longer than was necessary and refused to allow students to return to the entryway that night.

In November, a similar evacuation of approximately 450 Eliot House students spiked tempers. Passions ignited after a firefighter went on a tirade on a loudspeaker after the incident, threatening that if anybody pulled a false alarm again, he would pull the alarm himself during finals.

Eliot leads the Houses with more than four false alarms this year already, according to a previous Crimson article.

Freshman dorms have also had their share of nights spent in the cold. Stephanie Lo ’10, a resident of Canaday D, found herself on a neighbor’s futon Thursday night following the false alarm in Canaday Hall.

“Everyone was in pajamas,” she said. “One of my friends had only one shoe.”

The residents of Canaday D were unsuccessfully asked to confess and then told to find a place to stay for the night.

Lo said her proctor told the entryway they wouldn’t be allowed back because the entryway was a crime scene, and that dangerous chemicals had been sprayed. She also said, however, that the white powder remained in the stairwell once it had reopened the next morning.

Lo was able to find shelter with a friend in Thayer Hall, but others weren’t as lucky. Several students spent the night in Cabot library or in the basement of the Science Center, Lo said.

Now Dean Gross is ringing his own alarm to remind students of the implications of their actions.

“When the Cambridge Fire Department responds to a false alarm at

Harvard, the fire fighters are pulled from responding to a real emergency and their resources are depleted,” Gross wrote in the letter. Gross could not be reached for further comment.