New fire alarm covers emit a loud alarm when opened, a measure designed to deter pranksters. But unlike the actual alarms inside them, these covers do not alert local safety officials. If that sounds like a problem, it is.
The alarm cover piece, aptly called Stopper II
might stop more than pranksters. It also has the potential to stop students from sounding the alarm in case of genuine emergency. It's hard to fault the university's good intentions ' false alarms are a real and all too frequent problem. But there are fundamental flaws in the current solution. The anti-prank alarm could lead to a dangerous misunderstanding if a student thinks that the alarm has been activated when, in reality, the handle still must be pulled. Even a few moments of confusion could have fatal consequences.
So what can be done? First things first: The university should cut its losses and trash the Stopper II. Forget about dangerous proactive deterrents. The best ' and safest ' way to discourage potential pranksters is to lay down harsh consequences and enforce those consequences whenever possible. What the university could have done is take the more than $200,000 spent on these ridiculously flawed false-alarm deterrents and spend it on something that will actually bolster the safety and welfare of students ' such as the campus' blue light emergency phones.
An alarming study in May of this year revealed that many of the blue light emergency stations had significant functioning problems. Five months later, the status isn't much better. The phones are visually inconsistent and maintenance is decentralized and disorganized. An advisory council on campus safety is currently weighing the cost of standardizing the blue light system. A one-time replacement of all outdated phones and their housings would cost just over $80,000. So what are we waiting for?
As many of the outdated phones are nearing the end of their life-cycle, they are replaced as they fail. This approach is unacceptable. Ensuring the operation of blue light emergency phones should be a top-priority, not an afterthought. If the precautions are too costly, then maybe future OU officials should think long and hard before investing in anything as flawed and inadequate as the Stopper II.
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