Exeter Fire Department Cracks Down, Kills Joy

97 unauthorized refrigerators. 175 rooms with upholstered furniture. 42 beanbags. Broken sprinklers, moose heads hung precariously on walls and drapes were all accounted for in the nearly 1,000 E Book and Fire Code violations discovered during a dorm-wide search conducted by Facilities Management. Over the spring break, Facilities Management compiled a list of items that students must remove from their rooms and delivered the list to each dorm head.

The timing of this crackdown came as a surprise to many, but Dean of Students Melissa Mischke said that “the law has been on the book for a long time. They’ve just chosen now to enforce it.”

“The pendulum of safety seems to have swung very hard. The Fire Department is just trying to make people safe… they sometimes do things that seem unnecessary, but there’s nothing we or the school can do about it.”

Safety and Environmental Compliance Manager Tegan Vassillion said that during her time at the Academy, there had always been an understanding that once more pressing Fire Department-related issues (like uniformity of fire drills) were dealt with, the enforcement of the Fire Code would be next on the “priority list.”

In fact, Mischke said that the situation, while not ideal, was absolutely necessary. She explained that the Fire Department has threatened to shut down buildings on campus if they were not inspected. “We can’t afford being shut down… This is a challenging change for us, but we have to do it. We don’t have a choice.”

Mischke also noted that while many of the prohibited items make a space warmer or more personal, they must be removed. “I’m discouraged by it, but we don’t have any choice.”

The Fire Department did not respond to interview requests for this article.

But Vassillion explained that her and the Fire Department’s interests lie in “keep[ing] all students, faculty and staff safe,” and that despite the “over-the top” and “complicated” standards, their intent is simple and pure. She added that the number of reported fires in the dormitory occupancy group increased 18 percent from 1980 to 2011. That fact, paired with the example of some large-scale, devastating fires led the Fire Department to tighten their guidelines.

In the fall, Facilities Management searched classrooms and asked instructors to remove rugs, drapes and upholstered furniture, among other items, because of concerns of flammability. Once that process was complete, the Facilities team moved to checking dorm rooms. Some items that pose direct danger to students and dorms are to be removed immediately. Others, that the majority of the citations fall under, simply will not be permitted on campus next year.

The response on campus overall has been overwhelmingly negative. Students complained that the restrictions will keep them from making a dorm room feel like a home, and many faculty members and dorm heads felt that the precautions are over the top, especially considering the relative rarity of fires at Exeter.

McConnell Hall dorm head and health instructor Michelle Soucy said that the rules seemed  “a little silly.” She explained that because of the sprinkler systems and alarm systems already in place, these more minor infractions seemed like they wouldn’t make a significant difference. Soucy also said that many students are unhappy being forced to remove items that give them liberty to decorate their rooms and make them “more of a home.”  However, she added that her duty as a dorm head is to address violations if they become apparent to her. “If I notice a potential safety issue, it’s my duty… to ask a student to remove it.”

English instructor William Holcomb, who lives in Dunbar Hall, saw many of the newly imposed regulations as “arbitrary.” Holcomb attributed many of the changes to what he called a “cult of safety.” He described this “cult” as the idea that any possible liability issue or potential problem must be eliminated immediately. “The pendulum of safety seems to have swung very hard. The Fire Department is just trying to make people safe… they sometimes do things that seem unnecessary, but there’s nothing we or the school can do about it.”

Holcomb suggested a look into Exeter’s past, where students with fireplaces kept fires burning near highly flammable materials in their rooms while they went to class. However, fires even in Exeter’s past remained uncommon. While he didn’t suggest a return to those glaringly more unsafe times, some of the new impositions of the fire code go “beyond safety” and become excessive.

Despite the Fire Department’s good intentions to protect students’ safety, Exonians were especially upset. Upper Will Rau was informed by his dorm head that he had been cited for having a bean bag in his room, an item Rau hadn’t known was in violation of any code to begin with.

In Rau’s dorm, Cilley Hall, he was told he would be put on 7s until the item was removed from his room. He described the mood of his peers as “annoyed.” One of Rau’s friends “complained that the school wanted us to all live in plain uniformity” and that the new regulations felt like something of an attack on the privilege and right to decorate. Because the reasoning is not present, Rau said that he couldn’t agree with or comprehend the prohibition of so many seemingly harmless items.

Lower Kat Dumoulin said she was cited for her refrigerator. While she knew it wasn’t officially allowed, she purchased one after seeing other students who had them. She also added that after putting food in the dorm kitchen fridge, “things were stolen from me repeatedly, even with my name written all over them, even after telling the dorm faculty.” And, because she lives on the fourth floor in Bancroft, the basement kitchen was a “pretty hefty walk.”

When Dumoulin heard that she needed to remove the refrigerator, she and her friends were “upset and confused,” because the rule didn’t seem to address fire safety and felt more like a personal persecution.

Upper Ashley Baxter, who lives in Wheelwright Hall, has a full sized mattress in her room, which she has now been asked to throw out or take home, which is a twelve-hour drive. Baxter saw the regulations as “unreasonable.” Objects like hot plates seemed to fall under a more sensible ban, but “fires…are not [caused by] a mattress.”

Baxter stressed the importance of a dorm room being a space for the individual student and stated that these new regulations take away from that freedom. “Having my room decorated like home makes coming back to work after a long day doable,” she said. “I'm able to destress and sleep well.”

Dumoulin agreed. “We work so hard all day, from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., so we deserve a space to just relax and unwind.” She explained that because so much of students’ lives are already controlled by strict rules and schedules, these new restrictions take away even more of the “little independence given to us.”

While nearly all students and faculty members are frustrated by the new rules, the resounding mantra was that there is nothing to be done to change it. Because the rules come from state-ordained laws, they are unavoidable and there is little hope to change them, at least in the near future.