My dorm has a problem. Someone likes to light bulletin boards on fire in the middle of the night. It started last year during the spring semester. We had a total of 3 fires last year. Then this year, it has started again. Each time it is late, we're talking 10pm or later, and we all have to evacuate the building. Then the fire department has to come. It takes forever.
The second time it happened this semester it was 2am the night before I had a major Chemistry test! Not fun at all! Our alarm is so loud and noisy and scares me when I am asleep. Ashley and joke that all we say when it goes off is "shoes and coat, shoes and coat". These are the only items we worry about getting before we leave.
Well Saturday night one of Ashley's friends came over and we all watched some TV together before Emily left at about 10:30. Ashley and I were just sitting around being lazy when we heard it - the dreaded fire alarm. It's sad that when we hear it we respond with such urgency because we know that it is most likely a real fire, not just a drill. So we grabbed our shoes and coats (i had some trouble locating my shoes) and then ran outside. Sure enough we smelled smoke on the second floor.
Luckily our building has two parts - the academic wing and the residential wing (sounds fancy huh? it is a castle!). The two are not attached to eachother so when we have a fire (or on the rare chance that it's actually just a drill) we can go sit in the Great Hall, a large room in the academic wing. That keeps us from freezing in the cold Boone Weather.
So on Saturday night went over to the Great Hall and literally sat there for 3 hours! The firemen had to come and they had to inspect every single room. For some reason they think that whoever is doing this is lighting the bulletin board on fire and then hiding in a room. Apparently they also wrote a bunch of citations for illegal things in people's room. Ashley and I realized that our coffepot was still sitting out and started to worry. We asked one of the RAs what people were getting citations for and she says "well dont worry as long as your beer and wine bottles are hidden away under something you'll be fine" and we told her that no, that's not what we were worried about, we have a coffeepot out and some extension cords. She laughed and said that we were "cute".
To make a long store short, we sat in there FOREVER and finally got to go back in at about 2am. I was exhausted. They told us all that we have to take everything off our doors - no more cute letters and pictures! Our dorm looks so completely bare now. And today I just saw some maintenance people taking all of the bulletin boards down. This is very very sad.
This is a picture of the bulletin board that was torched on Saturday night. Not cool people, not cool.
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