Aside from field day, fire drills were the coolest time in grade school. They were about social gatherings and procrastinating on schoolwork, pushing the severity of an actual fire further from reality.

Anyone living in East Residence Halls or off-campus can attest to the fact that a fire alarm means one thing: turn up the stereo's volume. Fire alarms elicit so little response, let alone emergency reactions, that most people can sleep right through them.

Besides this, there's a lot of other safety concerns on campus. Some of them are being addressed by the university.

Penn State led the emergency activation phase following the Virginia Tech campus shooting with its PSUTXT system, which has plans to specifically request all students to join.The text system, they've found, is more reliable and up-to-date for our generation. Admittedly, we probably respond better to a brief "Get Out" text than an ear piercing alarm.

But getting out, sometimes, may be the hard part. The architects, who built on-campus buildings like Carnegie and Burrowes, should be commended for their creativity, but when it takes 15 minutes to find a bathroom in Atherton Hall, students may have serious issues attempting to escape in case of an emergency.

Anything beyond a basic floor plan -- where the room numbers correspond with the floor you're on and don't include letter or dashes -- is going to cause delay. On-campus buildings do not have the adequate information in regards to emergency situations; it could take you longer to find an emergency escape plan than your way out.

And in case this scenario does arise, university officials should also consider installing door locks that lock from the inside. In retrospect, many have claimed that if Virginia Tech's classrooms had such infrastructure, lives could have been saved. Penn State officials should take such suggestions seriously.

A 1996 shooting on the lawn of HUB-Robeson Center and the recent Virginia Tech incident, has raised awareness among university police and officials, but as Penn State expands, more attention should be paid to building safety.

Training police to take down active shooters, as university police have done recently, has unfortunately proven to be a necessary tactic. But will it be effective? Will a student armed with a baton and a walkie-talkie be willing to take on a gun?

We hope never to find out.