With the beginning of every new semester comes fire safety inspections in all residence hall rooms and, sometimes, confiscation of personal belongings.

Oswego State junior Julie Loney previously had a foldup table taken from her room by a resident assistant over the Thanksgiving break room checks in the fall of 2016. She and her roommate were issued a citation for a violation of the school alcohol policy and were ordered to take the InShape class at Mary Walker Health Center as a disciplinary action.

This happened during an inspection done to ensure no hazards would cause problems while the building was mostly vacant over break. Loney said she and her roommate only used it twice, never for irresponsible activities, so the consequences were a bit overdone.

“I think it was harsh for just the first time, because we didn’t even really know that they were going to take it and claim it to be alcohol paraphernalia,” Loney said. “We could have totally played it off and said that it wasn’t.”

Seneca Hall’s assistant hall director Adam Cesarini said he typically sees more confiscations and fire code violations reported in the inspections done after students leave for Thanksgiving and spring breaks, as many people simply forget to remove any prohibited items from their room.

So far in the current academic year, Cesarini said resident assistants have most commonly had to confiscate vape pens and e-cigarettes.

“I don’t think students fully understand that they are allowed to have those items, but they’re not allowed to use them,” Cesarini said. “We don’t confiscate them unless we see them being used in the residence halls.”

Cliff-Simon Vital is a second-year resident assistant in Funnelle Hall and said that in his experience, he very rarely has to confiscate items from students during room checks. He and other resident assistants have sometimes seen violations, like candles and microwaves, upon casually entering a student’s room during the week.

“We see a bit more of those violations just when we do rounds or walk into a resident’s room,” Vital said. “I, personally, don’t see a lot of that stuff, but that just means we have a good floor.”

Resident assistants can sometimes

“I guess sometimes it feels authoritative, but I guess that comes with the job,” Vital said. “We’re responsible to make sure [residents] are safe on the floor, so we have to make sure that items that would hurt [anyone] or harm the building aren’t there.”

Invasion of privacy can be a common concern for students when it comes to fire safety checks, but Vital does his best to alleviate things like that.

“I try very hard to make it very comfortable for people,” Vital said. “I ask permission; I knock; I send out emails ahead of time. I don’t surprise people.”

Students should never feel as though there are any surprises with the checks by resident assistants, as they are scheduled well in advance of the time they are conducted. Most resident assistants send out times during the week in which they are available to do checks so that students may sign up for a slot, but there are also some resident assistants that allow students to come to them with a convenient time, according to Cesarini.

The only time a check should ever randomly occur is when the fire marshal makes his appearance on campus to inspect a number of rooms in each building, chosen at random. Any violations will be immediately confiscated or fixed, Cesarini said.

Cesarini added that prohibited items, commonly seen in the form of candles, tapestries and extension cords, are on the prohibited items list because they are “item[s] that can be heated up without supervision.” Their biggest concern is when someone forgets to turn such an item off before leaving the room and it ends up getting too hot and catching something on fire.

The prohibited items list is one that conforms with the New York State Office of Fire Prevention and Control’s public college fire safety code. Assistant Vice President for Residence Life and Housing Richard Kolenda said that this code can change as new items appear on the market. Once a new item is deemed to be fire hazardous, it is added to the list.

Unlike Oswego State, Buffalo State has not outlawed the use of refrigerators with microwaves attached in residential buildings. Kolenda said they are not allowed at Oswego because of the amount of power they draw from outlets, which can trip a circuit breaker and cause a temporary outage.

Add in the occasional irresponsibility of students leaving things in the microwave too long and the possibility of pest infestation from cooking, and it becomes all the more reason to leave the microwave fridges at home.

“We really don’t want students to do a lot of cooking in their room because that invites a lot of pests,” Kolenda said. “Cockroaches and different kinds of things that we certainly don’t want to infest.”

Alexander Gault-Plate | The Oswegonian