Our fine University has a lot of different costs to prioritize. As students, it is
very easy for us to think that they should change their priorities to accommodate our
perspective. Sometimes, we as students might seem too demanding, but when we hear
that students are endangered in our library because of faulty safety equipment, we
hope that University priorities align with our own.
Basic student safety is our priority. When the University recognized that the D.H.
Hill Library had a deteriorating fire alarm system, they should have also recognized
the need for that safety system to jump to the top of the priority list.
When we think of students on the second, third and forth floors of the library, we do
not think of students completely aware of their environment. We think of students
looking down at books or laptops in those little cubical boxes with ear buds,
listening to their mp3 players. The library had no sound, visual or person making
these people aware of the emergency when the gas leak was taking place. Someone made a mistake.
Maybe the University does not know that students want their library to be without
fire or other safety hazards. After all, we’re paying for new burners to be put into
the Atrium, but we haven’t been paying for a functional fire alarm system in the
library.
We want to be angry with the people at fault for creating the gas leak and how they
should be more careful for our safety. However, it is difficult for us to ask others
to be more careful and responsible when our money that we feed into the University is
not being completely spent on careful and responsible precautions for these kinds of
events.
Hindsight is 20/20, and our improved eyesight should show the University that it
should fix this kind of problem in the future. Hopefully, the employees of the
library will gain access to the intercom system that could have alerted the students
without their headphones. More importantly though, we hope that our University
acknowledges a serious mistake in a top priority: our safety.
