Hand over your candle!

Today, at 230pm, 16 members of the Res Life staff plus a few security personnel at Fordham University successfully evacuated 14 McMahon Hall residents. 14 out of about 820 I think? No, I did not fudge these numbers. My coworker said it perfectly - if you want to evacuate McMahon Hall, simple announce an evacuation.

So, yes, three hours of my life were wasted today banging on doors, entering suites and checking for people who were possibly hiding/not following directions to evacuate. All I had to do was go in and lock everyone's door. Three hours! And that was with 14 residents home! But this is not the best part - oh no, it gets better...

I was also primary on duty tonight. For those non-Res Life folk, this means that if anything - and I do mean a-ne-thang - happens in the building, I get a phone call. Well, what happened all night? "Help, I'm locked out." In a four hour block of time I was called to unlock 21 apartments. 21. And don't get me wrong, most of these were not the residents' faults - the keys to the bedrooms were not working properly. So now, I've dealt with 21 people who are a little annoyed that they couldn't get into their bedrooms asking me why on earth Fordham would do this. I gave the speech..."Well, with terrorism on the rise, in case of an emergency we may have to evacuate, and since Fordham has never done that before, the city requires that we have a drill..."

"Oh, so it wasn't to just raid our rooms for violations and stuff?"

What? You have got to be kidding - I'm insulted. Do y'all really think we care that much about taking your candle away? Um, sorry but no, it's not that important. No, you did not have the director of Residential Life looking under every bed in the dorms searching for your toaster, alcohol, porn, whatever. You had ten really pissed off and utterly annoyed RAs going into your room to make sure your dumb ass wasn't in the shower while that obnoxiously obvious alarm was telling you to get out (which someone was). Duh