In Cambridge Hall, numerous fire alarms have gone off at random hours of the day throughout the entire semester. None of these alarms are fire drills – they’re going off between the hours of 1 and 7 a.m. Almost every time they are triggered, it is supposedly for fires localized in the trash room sprinkler zone of the building. Does Cambridge have someone frequenting the garbage chute in the early hours of the morn?

There could be an explanation – sophomore fire protection engineering major Brian Cohan says, “There is one possible reason that I can think of that would trigger the fire alarm at these early hours. If there is too much dust in the smoke detector, the detector won’t know the difference between actual dust and smoke, and it will trigger the alarm.”

Despite this, fire alarms are still necessary. If there is even the slightest chance a fire is about to consume your place of residence, an alarm is triggered, alerting you to move your hot buns out of the house, apartment or dorm.

Unfortunately, after the insane number of false alarms triggered in Cambridge Hall and elsewhere, most individuals probably don’t have the best reaction to these alarms.

Over the past semester, I’ve become aware of numerous problems associated with the fire alarm systems in College Park, Cambridge – which currently houses hundreds of students – and elsewhere.

Only a few months after the passing of senior David Ellis, we clearly still have unresolved issues, and something needs to change. No more of this back-and-forth nonsense with landlords, fire marshals and whoever else might be involved. We need real, actual developments so we can feel safe in our homes, not to mention get a little more sleep (not fragmented by frequent, unwarranted wake-up calls).

I credit members of the Greek community for recently holding a ceremony to commemorate the lives of many of its former members who have perished in the past few years, including Michael Scrocca, who died in a fire last year.

Let me clearly state I have the utmost respect and admiration for firefighters because they are here to save the lives of others – typically complete strangers. Every time one of the alarms is triggered, these honorable compatriots have to suit up in their gear, hop on the fire engine and rush over simply to turn it off.

After the events in Cambridge, numerous calls were made to 4-WORK and e-mails were sent to the fire marshal of Prince George’s County. Students living in Cambridge Hall are up in arms because they are thoroughly upset at these constant interruptions that do not appear to have any decipherable meaning. As students walk along the halls, they curse at the wretched building.

Fortunately, some real action was taken and the problem was supposedly fixed. The Department of Resident Life has since sent numerous e-mails to Cambridge residents. Last night, they even held a meeting to try to explain the matter to residents, however, it took almost an entire semester for this to happen.

I hope this is an isolated incident and not a problem in other buildings on the campus, because we would have a far more serious problem. In the future, there should be better channels of communication between the campus staff (who can fix the problem) and the residents.

In any event, students need to be aware of proper fire safety precautions. University officials and Resident Life need to work together to better educate students on this matter – more than just showing a comical video entitled Get Out, Stay Alive.

David Levitt is a sophomore physiology and neurobiology major. He can be reached at dlevitt@umd.edu.