False fire alarms plague Woodburn

Fire alarms prompted two evacuations of Woodburn Hall Tuesday for the second time this semester. \nThe Bloomington Fire Department responded to a pulled fire alarm in the academic building at 5:30 p.m. A faulty smoke detector in the third floor hallway was the source of the problem, said BFD Chief Steve Coover. But around 6:30 p.m., BFD were again called to the same scene in response to a second false alarm. This time, nearly 40 students waited outside for the situation to be resolved. \nBFD Battallion Chief Mark Webb said the alarm was due to a malfunction in the fire \nalarm system. \nWebb said he notified IU about the problem. \nLast week, a similar incident in Woodburn caused classes to be delayed or canceled. Some students complained that this has been a continual problem in the past few years.\n“This seems to happen with a lot of frequency in Woodburn,” said graduate student Brandon Wilkening. “I can recall at least a half a dozen times that this has happened in the past \nfew years.”\nVasabjit Banerjee, a political science graduate student and teaching assistant, \nsaid the pulled fire alarms are a major interruption to classes.\n“It’s really disruptive when this happens,” he said. “It happened at roughly the same time last week, so this is twice this semester that my classes have been interrupted.”\nFreshman Kirsty Gentry’s professor told students to go home as they waited outside for the building to be inspected by BFD.\n“I guess I’m ok with having to go home this time,” she said. “Last time it was really irritating though because we just stood outside for 20 minutes and then had to go back in.”