A $10 community fine was levied against all New South residents due to repeated false fire alarms. Over a two-week period, at least four false fire alarms have sounded during the late night and early morning hours, according to an e-mail sent to residents by New South Hall Director Edmund Kenny on March 27, 2003.

The first alarm sounded on Monday, March 17 at 11:50 p.m. There was another that went off around 2:30 a.m.on Friday, March 21. The third false alarm was pulled at 10:45 p.m. on March 25., according to the e-mail.

Kenny’s e-mail came as a warning to residents that if another false alarm was pulled, each resident would be fined ten dollars. He quoted the university’s Student Code of Conduct in his e-mail, which says that “Based on past experience, it has been determined that a community wide sanction is the only effective deterrent to random violations of fire safety regulations and damage to community property when no individual can be deemed responsible.”

Essentially, because the dorm is a community, each member is affected and involved in what goes on in the dorm, Kenny said.

Despite warnings, a fourth false alarm went off at 2:41 a.m. on April 9. Kenny then sent out another e-mail later that same day to all residents saying the students responsible for pulling the false fire alarm had 24-hours to turn themselves in to him. Students with information about the false drills were to contact Kenny with any details.

Kenny did not respond to a phone call and e-mails placed on Wednesday.

Susan Tanksi (COL ’06) said she doesn’t think the fine is fair even though a warning e-mail was sent out.

“First, we’re woken up in the middle of the night, it was cold, one of the nights it was raining, and they say you’re going to get in trouble if you don’t go out,” she said. “Then [Kenny] said he’d charge us all ten dollars if it goes off again, and if no one fesses up we’re going to have to pay 10 dollars.”

New South resident Louis Poppler (SFS ’06) said he was not in the building when the alarm went off. “I was in the library writing a paper the night the fire alarm was pulled. I didn’t even know about it until the next day,” Poppler said. “I did receive the e-mail warning about the $10 fine, I thought it was ridiculous because we don’t even know if it is a New South resident pulling the fire alarm, therefore it is not even sure that whoever pulled it knew about the fine.”

Scott Zumwalt (COL ’06) said he never received any information as to whether or not someone had turned themselves in. He supposed that no one did because a few days later a $10 fine appeared on StudentAccess for all New South residents. No official e-mail from Kenny or Residence Life staff members told residents that a fine would be levied for sure.

“We found the fine on our student access bill. [Kenny] never told us,” Zumwalt said. “We all happened to have [our bill]. Then we kind of realized [Kenny] did this without telling us that he actually did it. And I don’t when he would have actually told us.”

According to the warning e-mail Kenny sent, the fine was to serve as a deterrent from future false alarms. Since the fine, there have been no other false fire alarms in New South. But Tanksi isn’t so sure the fine will be a deterrent.

“Will anyone come forward? Probably not,” she said. “I just don’t think a $10 fine is going to do anything but make us get mad.”

Matthew Steckman (SFS ’06), another New South resident, said he e-mailed Kenny to express his concern.

“I e-mailed him and basically said you can’t punish the masses for something the masses didn’t even do,” Steckman said. “It could have been somebody from Village A. They hang out and smoke in front of New South. [Kenny] assumes one of us must have done it. To fine us $10 for something we didn’t do is a big problem.”

New South Resident Assistant Mythri Jegasthesan (COL ’03) explained that the false alarm fine is similar to other community-wide fines.

“It happens with any sort of community problem,” she said. “It’s like if chairs are stolen from the common room, because we are in a community, everyone would be fined.”

While many students are upset about the fine, Nathan Albee, hall director in Copley, is not.

“I am in support of Ed [Kenny]’s decision of community wide fines, because I think it is for a good reason,” Albee said. “Hall Directors have to think first about the safety of the students in their buildings. Repeated false alarms create a situation where residents become complacent and stay in their rooms when they hear an alarm. If a real fire should occur, yet people are used to ignoring the alarm, we could have a really tragic situation on our hands.”

Steckman agrees that student safety is important.

“Safety of students is the number one thing. All these pranks are jeopardizing safety of students,” he said.

However, Steckman said he did not necessarily think a fine was the best way to solve the problem. He said he would recommend other deterrents to false alarms such as putting “a glass in front of the alarms that you had to break in order to pull it or black ink so it shows up on your hands under a special light. You could put security cameras up [or] have DPS monitor.”

“They could’ve done a lot of things before [fining us],” he said. “The fine is just the easiest way out to make a little money for Georgetown.”