The 3 a.m. fire alarm in the Crescent and Westview residence halls last Friday was set off by an unidentified group who sprayed a fire extinguisher on the fourth floor hallway in Crescent and under a suite’s door.
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The cloud of smoke from the fire extinguisher set the alarm off. There was no actual fire, Chief of Public Safety David Barger said.
“It was an act of vandalism, serious act of vandalism by Connecticut act of statues,” Barger said. “It’s the equivalent of pulling the fire alarm.”
One of the suite’s resident, junior Raye-Lani Nyhuis, was sleeping when the fire alarm went off.
“After the fire alarm went off my roommates and I were really scared because our room was filled with what we thought was smoke and there was powder on the ground,” Nyhuis said. “We thought there was an actual fire in our room. We couldn’t breathe or see. All of us didn’t feel well after from breathing in all the dust.”
Public Safety and Residential Life members were outside of the suite and asked for the residents’ QCards. They took photos of their room and left them waiting in the hallway with the suspected boys, according to Nyhuis.
The residents were then sent back to their suite and were told someone would arrive later in the morning to clean their suite. However, no one arrived until 1 p.m., leaving the residents having to cook and walk around their suite with powder on the ground, Nyhuis said.
“This was the thing that was most infuriating about the whole situation because you aren’t supposed to inhale that and they let us sleep in it anyway,” Nyhuis said. “The dust was all over the floor and we were tracking it everywhere.”
Public Safety is currently investigating the incident. If you have any information, contact Chief Barger at 203-582-8956.