We Didn't Start the Fire

I've never been afraid of fire. As one of my friends (whose name will not be mentioned, although those I'm protecting him from will probably figure it out anyway) can tell you, and as my mother may just now be finding out (though it wouldn't surprise me if she already knew), I've spent a few minutes before many a day of junior high experimenting with lighters, matches, Raid, silly string, hairspray, and just about anything else that could take off my eyebrows. I wasn't afraid because a) penciled on eyebrows instead of the real thing were trendy, and b) I know how to stop drop and roll.

Recently, however, I've become more wary of the potential dangers that a fire can pose. Mostly because I think Columbia University (or at least the Fu Foundation) doesn't care if its students burn to death. I'm basing this entire theory on two things, which as it turns out, are not enough to take the school to court, even with the sleaziest of attorneys (1-800-GOT-HURT). It is, on the other hand, enough to rant about on the internet.

The first clue that the school may be an accomplice to arson related homicide is the way the desks are situated in the classroom. I knew enough people who had an impossible time getting classes at Cal Poly to appreciate a few extra spaces in the class, but this is out of control. A normal classroom has the desks situated into rows and columns (or little groups of four if your teacher is super cool and you all agree to behave... and you're in the fourth grade). I guess that's also true of these classrooms, but without the space in between the rows or columns. Getting in or out of the class (unless you want to sit in the front row with the people who want to learn), is like doing one of those puzzles where you have to move one block out of the room by pushing other blocks out of the way. If the building caught fire during class, the networks class would turn into a cooking class before you could say "Man, I wish I had some fun-fetti." Is this one of those things where I'm really just irritated about a minor inconvenience, so I try to make a serious issue out of it? Absolutely. Does that mean that I'm wrong? Not necessarily.

The other problem is with the fire alarms. I don't think the school quite gets the concept of an alarm. An alarm should create... alarm. I realize that nowadays they generally just create annoyance, but even so, a fire alarm in most places will at least disrupt the learning environment. Not true in my classrooms. When the alarm went off last week, people didn't even notice, not even the instructor. There was just one student who raised his hand and said, "Dr. Aho, that distant, quiet sound is actually the fire alarm. And it's going to stop in a minute, but that doesn't mean it's all clear, just that the alarm system sucks." And the worst part is, he was right. A minute or so later the alarm stopped, but officers came through the building to evacuate everyone and check the building for a fire. Had I been in, say, a "conference room," I might have been missed and may have not noticed anything was wrong until it was too late. A bit of a stretch, but in a 12 floor building odds are it's going to happen to somebody if an actual fire starts.

So what's the take away? What did I learn from all this? Why did I choose this from all the pending topics to share with you today? The moral of the story is this: when you don't get a class, or when you are annoyed by an alarm of any kind, you shouldn't be angry; you should be happy you're not dying in a fire.