By Svenja van den Woldenberg, Staff Writer

It is sadly a usual sight to see graduate students outside their dorm building surrounded by the flashing lights of public safety vehicles. But do not be so quick to point the finger at a faulty fire alarm system.

Bill Sollin, Hofstra’s Fire and Life Safety Officer, said that two-thirds of the fire drills in the graduate dorms are caused by residential cooking accidents.     

“These buildings are built such as they follow all the fire codes and local ordinances from the fire marshal’s office of Nassau County,” he said, “so that building, the way it’s built follows all those codes and within that we have detection equipment throughout every part of the suite, every bedroom, outside the bathroom, right outside the kitchen area, the hallways, the air handling equipment. Everywhere there’s detection, now that’s not normal for people’s homes.”

Since August 10, 2011 there have been 23 fire alarms logged by Public Safety, said Sollin, 15 of which have been caused by cooking. This period, between August and September is what Sollin refers to as the “breaking in phase.”

“The practice is at home. If you burn a little something, open a window, take the battery out of the smoke detector,” said Sollin, “Their habits at home do not complement this building.”

But as any graduate student, and Sollin himself will tell you, the smoke detectors in the graduate building are not battery operated and there is no window to open. Worse yet, Sollin said, is that students open the door as an alternative, allowing the smoke to reach the hallway smoke detector.

The remaining alarms this summer were caused by steam from a faulty dryer vent and hairspray, said Sollin. He explained that the mirror in the hallway of graduate suites has a smoke detector right above it, which has to be there by code; and that the problem could be solved if students did their hair in their bathrooms.

In an effort to deal with the problem Sollin met with Jean Smith, Associate Director of Residential Life, Graduate Resident Director Becky Christiansen and students to discuss the problem.

Sollin said that they had just enough time to make the introductions befo the fire alarm went off. Sollin said that Christiansen is also working on addressing the problem by sending out a list of tips and posting a YouTube video to help students learn what they can do to prevent fire drills.

Graduate student Jennifer Joyce said, “I don’t know the exact number, but I experienced a lot of them. They didn’t really do anything to my schedule but it just interrupted my day, which was kind of annoying. The only one that really got me pissed was the one at 4 a.m.!”