I am writing to express my concerns about fire safety issues in off-campus housing.

Around 12:30 a.m. Tuesday night, the fire alarm in my building sounded, once again. It is typical in off-campus apartments to have false alarms and as usual, most residents of my building did not immediately respond.

Moments later though, I received a call from my friend on another floor of the building alerting me that this was indeed a real fire alarm.

My roommate and I grabbed our coats and proceeded to the stairwell, meeting many other students looking confused in their pajamas. It took almost 30 minutes for all of the building's residents to evacuate. Most people still assumed it was a false alarm and tried to go back inside.We soon learned that there was a fire in the dumpster outside of our building and smoke had filled one end of the complex. An hour later, we were all able to return to our smoke-filled apartments.

I feel particularly sensitive to these issues because I was attending Bloomsburg University when a fire destroyed the TKE fraternity house, killing several of its members. When I transferred to University Park in the Fall 2000, I moved into the Gateway Apartment complex where we were plagued with at least one false fire alarm per weekend. I am curious what possesses a person to pull the fire alarm just for kicks? Because of this action, fire alarms and rarely taken seriously anymore. I am scared to think of how many people this phenomena could harm when a false fire alarm turns out to be a real fire. So to all of those people who enjoy setting off false fire alarms, please keep in mind that you are endangering the safety of those around you.