By A small crowd formed outside the Academic Services building Tuesday due to a fire alarm that went off on the second floor landing near the elevators.
The alarm went off at 10:16 a.m., which prompted students and faculty to evacuate the building as well as the Beach Hut. Facility workers on the scene thought that someone might have triggered the alarm with a smoking device.
Lt. Richard Goodwin of the University Police Department, said he believes that it had something to do with how old the alarm was.
“[Fire alarms] go bad with age,” Goodwin said. “In this case, they just went off.”
The building was jam packed with students when the fire alarm went off.
“We were just doing homework for calculus,” said Sean Bindman, a first year business economics major, among a group of his friends who had just left the building and were waiting to return. They were part of the crowd outside discussing what had just occurred.
Others, like Sherri Span, professor of psychology and interim director of the faculty center, used the crowd as an opportunity to try to register new voters for the upcoming election on Nov. 6.
“They were all there, and I said, ‘Great, let me try to get somebody,’ and I didn’t [find anyone],” said Span, whose recruitment table was near the AS building.
Students were allowed back in approximately 15 minutes after the alarm sounded.
Facilities closed one of the elevators and replaced the smoke detector, which facilities said is a standard practice. According to the report given to the UPD, smoke detectors become inoperable after a fire alarm.
“At least [the alarm] went off. They were able to find out that it was faulty and fix it,” Goodwin said.
