Students who want to decorate the outside of their dorm for the holidays should think again, as several West Halls residents recently found out.

Irvin Hall students who put holiday lights on the front of the building and the surrounding trees last week were told by the university to take the lights down because they were a fire hazard.

Mark Levin (freshman-meteorology), vice president of the Earth and Mineral Sciences interest house located in Irvin Hall, started a petition to get the lights back up. Levin said the petition, on the main door of the building, had 70 signatures by Saturday morning, but that night someone stole the pen and the third page of the petition. The page and the pen were replaced Sunday.

"Apparently there is some opposition," Levin said.

Conal Carr, assistant director of Residence Life, said the students used indoor cords and put themselves in an unsafe situation by hanging the lights at the high locations they chose.

"Lights aren't supposed to be on the outside of the buildings at all," Carr said.

According to Housing and Residence Life's holiday decoration guidelines, students can put lights up in their room, but the university requests that students not do this in order to save energy. The guidelines address how to decorate the inside of the dorms but not the outside.

Carr said Residence Life officials met to decide on its response because people don't generally put lights outside their buildings. An additional issue with the lights was how safe it would be to access the lights. Students hanging out their windows to get to the lights could fall out of their windows and hurt themselves, Carr said. Accessing the lights also is a violation of a policy against removing window screens.

Ben Sipprell (junior-meteorology), president of the special living option, said he did not think putting the lights up would hurt anyone.

"This year has been really down with the (Sept. 11) attacks," Sipprell said. "It was bringing spirit back."

"We thought it would be festive to put up holiday lights," Levin said. "The executive council voted on putting up lights to show our holiday spirit as one big family."

Sipprell said Residence Life first called to ask that the lights be shut off, but when someone turned them on again, a Residence Life coordinator came with the police and said the lights had to come down.

Carr confirmed that the coordinator did bring a police officer along but said it was to gain necessary access to buildings and to make sure areas were secure.

Sipprell said the amount of lights and plugs in his room causes more of a fire hazard than did the lights outside.

"We've added lights around every nook and corner of our room," Sipprell said.

West Halls Residence Association President Mike Carroll said he did not have an opinion on the lights, but knew they posed a safety issue.

"I think the lights look nice, but we can't break the rules," Carroll said, "and housing sets the rules."