False Alarm

Students here at Harvard are not the only ones plagued by midnight fire alarms. First year residents of newly constructed dormitories at Stanford University have had so many rude awakenings that officials there have been forced to change their smoke alarm system

More than 30 alarms have gone off at the new dormitories so far this quarter, as opposed to only 17 for all of autumn quarter, said Jan Van Houten, director of Governor's Corner

Glenn Carroll, manager of the Governor's Corner faculty, said the smoke detectors in the rooms and corridors in the suites are "too sensitive for the given amount of square footage" and are being replaced by the smoke detector manufacturer, Pyrotechnics.

Officials at the University, Carroll said were concerned that students were becoming "inured" to the alarms So many alarms are going off that they're not responding any more." he said

Perhaps Harvard could profit from a western example. The Stanford Daily, February 13