The Crisis That Wasn't

Last Sunday night as I sat in my room typing the next installment of my column, thinking of how dull the Harvard campus has been recently, I was interrupted by the piercing sound of my fire alarm. Cursing the now-routine recent barrage of fire drills, I grabbed my coat and rushed downstairs into the courtyard. Only this time, to my delight, the distinct smell of acrid smoke greeted my nostrils upon exiting the building.

“Perhaps we will have some excitement on a Sunday night,” we thought. For once, the grumbling masses became the bubbly masses, as there was a sense of vindication to our exodus—after the million repeated practice evacuations, one most notably last year amidst freezing rain at 7 a.m., we were finally responding to a real emergency. We were leaving with purpose!

The scene outside of Eliot House fed the flames of the growing melodrama. A barrage of at least eight emergency vehicles suddenly appeared on the scene, transforming Eliot House into a giant movie set, and us, its humble denizens, into starring actors watching its demise! Impatient to get as much time on camera as possible, we thronged in mobs around the emergency vehicles as they appeared one after another, elbowing forward to catch a glimpse of a firefighter bravely risking his life to save our poor Eliot.

Like clockwork, as the first firefighter entered the building, the scriptwriters (a.k.a rumor mill) arrived on the scene to fill in the plot details. Fire “experts” emerged from the crowd, each with a different theory as to how the fire had started. Some said that the boiler blew up in a ball of flames—after all, we have had trouble recently with our hot water. Others were sure that the grill had caught on fire, which they could tell very obviously by the smoke’s aroma—something akin to charred grilled cheese.

When the E.M.T.s began wheeling stretchers out of the ambulances, the pitch rose toward the film’s climax. We immediately began to suspect the worst—surely, if there were ambulances, someone must be hurt! Sensational! And when the police assured us that ambulances were always present at fires as a matter of protocol, you could almost hear our collective sigh—of relief, of course.

But, all was not lost! We still had a plethora of worries to occupy our minds. We worried about our possessions, and like all diligent Harvardians, we wondered whether we would lose our computers with all of our work. We began concocting elaborate scenarios about the future, imagining living without toothbrushes in Loker Commons, mentally filling out bloated insurance claims for the stuff we would lose. Each of us fantasized about the great excuse we would have to get extensions on those pesky problem sets, papers and tests—or maybe, because of the mental trauma, we could be excused from the assignments altogether!

Then, the cell phones came out. We called our friends, parents, aunts, uncles and our favorite administrators. Surely they would want to hear about our misfortune. Their heartfelt words of sympathy warmed our spirits—yes, it is freezing cold, and no, we don’t have anywhere to go. We thanked them for their compassion, and gently humored their concerns about our health. If they linked our misfortune to Sept. 11, or the hushed T-word was mentioned, we laughed contemptuously at their simplicity. “Let’s not overreact,” we said.

As fingers and toes actually did grow numb, the crowd began to break up into groups—those who had friends in other Houses, and those who didn’t. The have-friends dispersed, left to anxiously await further news about our burning abode as they comfortably watched TV and complained incessantly about the inconvenience to their bored friends. The friend-less were left to wander the streets, homeless and lonely, while Dean Lewis stretched out at home by a fire, smoked his pipe and patted his dog on the head. All was quiet on the administrators’ front—there was no need to bother helping students. “Chalk it up to another learning experience outside the classroom,” one administrator was rumored to have said. After thinking hard for a minute, the administrator added, “Fires might be a good way to alleviate the housing shortage—it’s survival of the fittest, where those who can’t stand the heat can go abroad!”

Several hours later, wherever Eliot’s Diaspora wound up, we were given the computer smoke-signal that all was clear. The crisis had passed. Those of us in our friends’ rooms immediately got the message, as we were incessantly checking e-mail for breaking news about the calamity, and we grudgingly returned home. Those wandering the streets were found the next morning by the Charles half-frozen to death, still oblivious to the fact that the danger had passed.

And so, the Eliot drama anti-climaxed, and once again, Eliotites were forced back into the daily grind—sadly without an excuse for an extension.

Robert J. Fenster ’03 is a biology concentrator in Eliot House. His column appears on alternate Wednesdays.