How much responsibility do
How closely does the Amherst Fire Department expect students to follow the fire code? Not very close at all.
On Feb.26, a dorm resident on the second floor of the Baker dormitory in the Central Residential Area, hit a pipe and sprinkler in their room on the second floor of the building. This caused the sprinkler to go off, after which the Amherst Fire Department was called. By the time that they had arrived and turned off the water and electricity to the affected places, a large portion of the first and second floors of the wing of the dorm, where it had happened in, had been thoroughly flooded. The water had gone through the crack under the initial room’s door, into other rooms and through the hall. A number of rooms on the first floor were leaked into as well.
Officials from the
UMass resident hall contracts state, ‘The University may enter student rooms without notice if it has reason to believe a health or safety emergency exists.’
The housing department of the University is, at its most fundamental level, interested in the safety of the students. Its obligation is in keeping all the students safe while in their dorms, and in this case, a student had caused an emergency by the fairly common activity of putting clothes up on the pipe in their room.
This responsibility of the University to ensure the safety of the students in its dorms is clear, and as a result, people living in the dorms should have virtually no expectation to privacy. If the University deems it to be reasonable, they have the right to declare a safety emergency whenever they want.
Does it suck? Yes. Is this way of thinking worth it? Yes.
The net result of the procedure of checking rooms is a net benefit to all the students. Water plus electricity equals fire.
And during an interview, Captain Bill Klaus Jr., who had led the firefighters in the dorm, said that approximately ’50 percent of the rooms’ had fire code violations, and there were ’3 rooms with covered smoke detectors.’ And firefighters returned multiple times over the coming weeks, and conducted searches of the rooms, at random intervals, to make sure the violations had ‘stayed fixed.’
The University checks many of the dorm rooms on much of the campus ‘- during winter break. While this is generally enough to satisfy their responsibility to student safety, it also leaves students more than enough time to hide things, and make safe their rooms. It may help that those who check the rooms are allowed to cite people only for things in ‘plain view.’
Many students do, however, no matter how wise their decision, put bags back over their smoke detectors and hang clothes, lights and tapestries from and around the room’s pipes when they return from Winter Break. This only goes to further prove that the AFD’s belief in safety hazards was warranted.
This creates a hazard to the public good of everyone who lives in the dorms, and the AFD and UMass were covering themselves from possible lawsuits, which might further raise student fees, by conducting their searches.
The citations they made while at the dorm, however, are a different story. Immediately after turning off the water in the dorms and turning off the electricity, the AFD entered other rooms and found that 50 percent of them had fire code violations: This led the officials to give out citations to many of the students in the dorm.
Massachusetts General Law 148, Section 5 says that the fire marshal, or anyone he asks to, can ‘ … make an investigation as to the existence of conditions likely to cause fire.’ After that, ‘They shall, in writing, order such conditions to be remedied,’ and ‘If said order is not complied with within twenty-four hours, [whoever makes the order] may enter into such building’ to fix the problem, and to fine up to $50 per violation.
This allows for the written warning, implying that the people should be given only a fine after being asked and not having removed from their room whatever item violated policy.
William Korniotes, a Baker dorm resident who received a citation, says that he and his roommate each received $100 fines, for a single infraction. Many others reported similar fines.
Our firefighters are heroes, and these men could very well have been saving lives by checking and making sure the dorms were safe. Many students here could afford to play it just a bit safer, even if only taking down the bags from the
ir smoke detectors when they’re not in the rooms.
But should they be fining people for something that even the University allows a three-strike policy for, which is clearly dictated over in the general laws? And is this lack of a right to privacy great enough to push people away from living in these dormitories? Like death and taxes, only time and the courts can decide.
Jon Petersen is a Collegian columnist. He can be reached at jpeterse@student.umass.edu.
