By Signe K. Skinion

Six SIUC students received given summons to appear in court for allegedly setting off fire alarms at the University Park towers at the end of last semester, University officials say.

Brad Dillard, service enterprises manager at the SIUC Physical Plant, said the week of Dec. 10 through Dec. 16 had 15 fire responses six of those were in one evening at Schneider Hall, Neely Hall and Mae Smith, all located in University Park, an on-campus residence hall complex. He said only two of the 15 alarms were for actual emergencies.

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Steve Kirk, assistant director of Residence Life, said residents of halls where the alarms occurred realized what was happening, and some helped lead campus police to the students who are suspected of pulling the alarms.

Most of the residents understood there were people setting off false alarms, and as the word got out that the alarms weren’t malfunctions, the campus police got a lot of cooperation from people coming forward with information, Kirk said.

Jackson County State’s Attorney Mike Wepsiec said the suspected students have been given a summons to appear in court to face charges of a class IV felony.

Because of the serious nature of alarming the fire department, these people are facing felony charges, Wepsiec said. A class four felony charge carries a one-to-three-year prison sentence and also a $10,000 fine. This is probational, but I do know that in 1986 there was a person sentenced to three years for pulling a false alarm.

Kirk said campus police talked with the suspects, and the alarms stopped, but he said the alarms had already caused a lot of damage.

People don’t realize how serious this situation is, and the most common reaction is Oh my gosh, I didn’t realize this could happen,’ Kirk said. The assumption is this is a prank, but the reality is the ramifications from this prank are more than a slap on the wrist.

Kirk said the suspects will have to deal with University Housing, the Student Judicial Affairs and the State’s Attorney for pulling the alarm.

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We at University Housing have to decide if we want them to continue living in the residence halls, Kirk said. The students will also have to deal with Student Judicial Affairs. And they will have to see if the State’s Attorney will take them to court.

Wepsiec said the fine is harsh because a falsely pulled fire alarm is disorderly conduct and puts peoples’ lives in danger.

Pulling a false fire alarm falls under disorderly conduct because the person is knowingly transmitting a false report to a government body, Wepsiec said. The prosecution is serious because there might be a real fire elsewhere, and if the fire department is answering a false report, human life can be compromised over a prank.

Wepsiec said a lot of these offenses go unpunished. He said the reason was the difficulty in prosecuting the people because there an eyewitness or fingerprints left on the device are usually not available when the alarm occurs.

Dillard said the number of false fire alarms in on-campus housing continues to grow every year.

There are 96 buildings on campus that have automatic fire alarms, Dillard said. In 1994, there were 39 responses to housing areas on campus making up 44 percent of the Carbondale fire responses for that year. In 1995, the fire department made 71 responses to housing areas making up 62 percent of the Carbondale responses for the year.

Dillard said the rise in responses is a result of student pranks.

Students pull the fire alarms and intentionally set off the smoke detectors, and we don’t know if there are real fires. So the fire department comes in, Dillard said.

Ed Jones, University Housing director, said the felony charge supersedes anything the University can do to the suspects, but he said there will be corrective measures taken on a campus.

Pulling a false alarm is not a prank. It is endangerment of human life, and it causes problems for everyone involved, Jones said. Nobody wants to be woken up at 3 a.m. to the sound of an alarm and stand out in the cold or bad weather because someone thought it would be funny to pull the alarm.

To help in apprehending the people who pull the false alarms, Jones said University Housing is working on a program to make students more responsive to the problem.

We have been working to establish a reward policy for anyone who leads us to the arrest and conviction of someone who pulls a false alarm, Jones said. What we are hoping to do is get students to realize that if they help us, then we can help them by getting people to stop pulling false alarms.