Intervis violators may be punished when following alarm procedures
By Anna Walters
The night before summer vacation 2006, a fire alarm in Shipstad Hall went off around 4 a.m., sending most of the building's occupants out the doors and onto the quad.
Senior Danielle Malosh, then a sophomore, was staying in her boyfriend's Shipstad Hall room, having packed away all her belongings in her Corrado Hall dorm room the day before. So when the alarm went off, she decided to stay put during the dorm-wide evacuation.
Last year, 110 students were found in violation of the intervisitation or guest policies in the dorms according to Michael Walsh, director of Residence Life.
Although Walsh reported only a few cases of violations during a potential fire emergency, some students, like Malosh, make up a number of unreported cases.
Students who choose to remain indoors during a fire alarm beg the question: Should policies be suspended during emergencies?
"I was just envisioning having to go outside and the RAs were out there," Malosh said. "It was the last day of school, and I didn't want to get caught for intervis, and if I wanted to come back in, I'd have to sneak back in."
A short time later, Malosh heard the voices of Public Safety officers outside in the hall. She dismissed the idea that they would enter her boyfriend's room, but nonetheless jammed her body between the wall and the top bunk and covered herself with blankets. Then two Public Safety officers entered.
"They fiddled with (the alarm) and then they shut the lights off and left and I breathed," she said.
The fire alarm in the room had malfunctioned, sending a false signal throughout the entire dorm.
In the case of a fire alarm - drill or not - every person in the building is expected to evacuate, even guest-policy violators, according to university policy.
The particular Shipstad fire alarm caught several students violating UP's guest policy.
Junior Lauren McCabe's boyfriend was spending the night in her Shipstad dorm room that night. As the couple exited the building, McCabe's boyfriend ducked behind other females in McCabe's hall before arriving in the co-ed territory of the stairwell.
"You always joke about it," she said. "What would you do, stay and hide? What if it was the real thing?"
Outside on the quad, McCabe ran into other friends who were breaking intervisitation, but could not find one particular friend that she knew to be sleeping in her boyfriend's room that night on another floor in Shipstad.
Later, McCabe asked her friend about her whereabouts during the alarm.
"She said she looked out her window and saw the bushes weren't on fire," McCabe said. So the friend decided to stay put rather than risk a citation for violating University policy.
According to "Life on the Bluff," a residential policies manual, the reasoning behind the intervisitation policy is two-fold. First, restricting the hours students may visit members of the opposite sex ensures that roommates and other residents' study, privacy and sleeping habits are not disturbed. Second, the policy stands to "provide a more safe and secure environment within the hall."
The consequences for breaking intervisitation and the guest policy vary. Most first-time offenders are required to pay a $25 fine, according to Walsh.
The penalties for not exiting a building in the event of a fire drill are more severe. First, if a fire inspector notices that a student remained in the building during a drill, the University is charged a $250 fine for that person, according to Jeff Rook, Public Safety's environmental safety officer.
Judicial action can be taken against a student who doesn't heed a fire alarm. According to "Life on the Bluff," "failure to evacuate a residential facility under general alarm or whenever directed to do so by a University official (including residence assistants)" is call for judicial action or sanctions.
Walsh said that he has never known a student referred to the judicial system because he or she was caught violating the intervisitation or guest policies during a potential fire emergency in the six years that he has been director of Residence Life.
"It's not like you're going to get kicked out of your hall if it's your first violation," he said. "If we caught someone during a fire drill situation that was breaking intervis, the hall director might just have a conversation with that person."
Dorms hold fire drills each semester during intervisitation hours, so if a fire alarm goes off after intervisistation hours, it may signify an actual fire.
Walsh said he would be concerned if a student chose to remain in the building during a fire alarm because he or she feared judicial reprimand.
"They'd never know if it was a drill or the real thing," Walsh said. "If you're hiding out, we don't know to look for you."
Kristen Sellon, a junior, was also breaking the guest policy when the fire alarm went off in Shipstad.
"I was sleeping, so I just went outside because Dan (an RA) knew about me and some other people, so it didn't matter," she said. "It was like an 'oh crap' moment. I wasn't too worried about getting in trouble."
Sellon thinks the danger a fire presents trumps any backlash rule-breakers would receive.
"In situations like that, I think getting away from fire is a priority to breaking intervis," she said.
Another junior, Megan Kuensting, witnessed the Shipstad evacuation that morning. Kuensting was seeing a friend off who was catching a cab to the airport in front of the Pilot House.
Kuensting thinks that the rules still apply in the event of a fire drill or emergency, but that violators who are caught while exiting the building should receive only a warning.
"Public Safety probably has more to worry about during a fire drill than intervisitation," she said. "At the same time, I don't think that people should go around flaunting that they're breaking intervis. If I got in trouble for breaking intervis at another time and then somebody else got away with it because of a fire drill, I'd be a little upset."
Walsh knows that the intervisitation policy is unpopular with students. He thinks that more students would choose to live on-campus if the policy wasn't in place.
Nonetheless, when it comes to fire, drill or not, Walsh anticipates that students will consider their safety and exit the building.
"Even if you a have a beer in your hand, we still expect everyone to evacuate," he said.