“I can’t believe this! My roommates would have just let me die!” screeched a Lafayette Hall resident on Tuesday morning. She’d slept soundly through the 3.30am fire alarm that scattered the rest of the building’s occupants throughout the surrounding streets. Apparently no one gave her the memo.

As it blared through the dorm, my roommates and I discussed whether we should take the siren seriously. We eventually decided that 3.30 in the morning is an absurd time for a drill, even for alarm-happy NYU. So, like most of the other Lafayette residents, we begrudgingly made the trek from the comfort of our beds down to the frigid outside.

The faint aroma of smoke in the stair well was no stronger than that of a blown out candle as we descended from the 7th floor. Apparently my upstairs cohabitants were bombarded with actual smoke though, particularly from the 9th floor up where chaos ensued.Exiting students could view a waterfall likened to the art exhibit at the Brooklyn Bridge cascading down the elevator shaft. Clearly this was not a drill, but it was irritating all the same.

Once outside, students swooped in on every available sitting space. Speculations as to the cause swirled, and some guys in the street gathered quite a crowd of onlookers as they pointed to a high up window that seemed to have a red glow to it. The fact that the “glow” looked suspiciously like light through curtains seemed irrelevant to a crowd looking for answers.

Students sat around miserable, tired and with no answers for an hour. Finally, those in charge corralled us all into lines so we could re-enter the building. This act was apparently just a cruel joke, however, because we waited for at least another 20 minutes before actually being allowed back inside.

“I felt like they were treating us like we were in kindergarten,” said resident Pier Harrison. “I understand they were taking safety precautions, but there was one guard that kept yelling at everyone, and I seriously thought they were going to bust out the tear gas on us”.

And woe to those who somehow forgot their IDs as they disorientedly left their rooms at 3.30am. Those students, myself included, had to relocate to a different line, where we were told we would have to wait for the thousand plus students with their IDs to be let in before they would check our names off of a list and finally allowed us to enter.

No blanket explanation has been sent to the residents as to the cause of the great evacuation that left some wanting for their beds until as late as 5:00 in the morning.

Photo: Flickr courtesy of Pro-Zak.