Honors Hall | Photo by Christian Peters | The Wright State Guardian
The fire alarms went off repeatedly in the Wright State University (WSU) honors dorms during the week of Sept. 6. The university acknowledged that all but two incidents were due to students vaping in the dorms.
Vaping
Throughout the week of Sept. 6, the fire alarms within the WSU Honors Community went off several times over the course of four days.
According to the WSU Housing Maintenance Team, the fire department determined on the night of Sept. 8 that most of the fire alarm triggers during the week were caused by smoke. The smoke was determined to most likely be caused by vaping.
“People vape all the time in the honors dorms, it’s really bad,” WSU freshman engineering student Megan McHone said. “They go into the stairwells and think they’re super sneaky about it.”
The email sent out by WSU Housing to honors dorm residents on Sept. 9 informed students that the smoke heads compromised by vaping were replaced as a precaution. Students were also reminded in the email that WSU is a vape-free/tobacco-free campus.
To read more about the WSU no-smoking policies, go to Tobacco-Free Policy.
At the time of writing, WSU Residential Life and Housing declined the opportunity to provide a statement.
Other fire alarm triggers
Two other fire alarm incidents occurred during the week of Sept. 6 in the Honors Community. One of which was due to a compression issue that the WSU Housing Maintenance Team said was repaired on the same day.
The second non-smoking fire alarm trigger occurred due to an overloaded dryer causing the alarm in the laundry room to go off. The Honors Community is not the only community on campus to have dryer issues in the first several weeks of the semester.
“I have friends who live in the dorms who say their dryers have not let them run cycles longer than 15 minutes since the start of the semester,” WSU alumni Julia Boyd said. “I guess that’s better than dryers catching on fire though.”
Students who previously lived in the WSU Honors Community said the fire alarms used to get set off frequently for unknown reasons.
“When I lived there [two years ago], I feel like the fire alarms went off all the time without any real reason,” WSU junior biology student Zoe Paxhia-Poppaw said.
