Mirror - Vol. 04, No. 17 - February 5, 1981

              Fire Safety Practices Questioned After Blazes
by Bryan LeClerc
Two fires hit Fareast Dorm in as
many days last week. The first
took place on Thursday night,
followed by a similar incident Fri-day
afternoon. Both have created
concern for the fire prevention
practices of the university
because of the disastrous con-flagrations
that took their toll at
Providence College and Central
Connecticut State College in the
past few years.
The first of last week's fires
began around eleven p.m. Thurs-day
night when an alert R.A., Frank
Kozar, detected smoke in the halls
and immediately pulled the alarm.
He then called the campus securi-ty
department to have them roll
the fire apparatus. Under normal
conditions the local firefighters
will not respond until security of-ficers
arrive at the scene and
evaluate the situation. This is
primarily the result of the high
number of false alarms received
from the university.
Within minutes the Fairfield
Fire Department was on the scene
to determine the origin of smoke
on the third and fourth floors in
the male half of the building. The
cause was thought to be a faulty
ventilating fan on the roof that
backed up smoke into the maids'
closets when it began to burn.
Students braved freezing tem-peratures
amid a blur of flashing
lights and blaring radios on the
fire trucks for the word to return to
their rooms. Some took shelter in
nearby Southeast Dorm, anxiously
looking on through the windows
of the lounges. Little did they
know that within twenty-four
hours they would be forced out
because of another fire.
Around 3:45 Friday afternoon
students on the third floor smelled
smoke and called security. Upon
arrival, the officers set off the
alarms and called in the fire de-partment.
They also discovered
the building's elevator stuck be-tween
floors.
It was soon found that the
motor of the elevator was burning
and pushing smoke into the same
vent shaft as the night before. The
fire marshall's office was still in-vestigating
the cause of the fires
as of this printing and could not
confirm if it was the elevator
motor causing the trouble both
days or if it was just a coincidence
that two units connected to the
same shaft should burn in two
days.
In an on-the-scene interview
Thursday night head resident ad-visor
Gary Stephenson said, "If
Fareast had the amount of false
alarms that Campion and Regis
do, we may not have evacuated
Fareast in the seven minutes it
took." He added, "It has taken ap-proximately
twenty minutes in
Regis to evacuate."
The number of false alarms has
created concern over the fire
prevention practices of the univer-sity.
William Schmpf, Vice-Presi-dent
of Student Services, stated
the number of false alarms "is a
real problem for us." He feels the
problem is that "everyone as-sumes
it is a false alarm. The fire
department, R.A.s, security of-ficers,
and students go with that
expectation. This time it was dif-ferent."
This time it was different, but
there were no problems in getting
the students out. The R.A.s all
worked quickly and thoroughly
with security in emptying the
dorm before the firefighters began
rolling in. If a quad dorm had
undergone the same problem,
there may have been trouble due
to slow evacuation times in some
residence halls.
In an interview with Henry
Stevens, fire prevention coor-dinator
for the university, it was
learned that a disastrous dorm
fire, of the type that hit Providence
College and Central Connecticut
State recently, could have just as
easily have taken place at Fair-field.
There was no major design
differences between these build-ings
and our eight dorms on cam-pus.
"All are under the impression
that cement or painted cinder
blocks won't burn. Anything hot
enough will burn," says Stevens.
Students are reminded that fire
doors must be left closed at all
times. Open doors at the M.G.M.
Grand Hotel in Las Vegas and
several recent college fires have
caused many unnecessary lives to
be lost.
According to Stevens, "It can
happen here and it's carelessness
that causes it to happen. Don't
pull false alarms, keep the fire
doors closed, and don't damage
any fire-fighting equipment."
THE
FAIRFIELD Vol. 4, No. 17, Feb. 5, 1981
FAIRFIELD UNIVERSITY, FAIRFIELD, CONN. 06430 MIRROR ^^ Incorporated 1977
Administrator Cites Alcohol Misuses at Seminar
by Jim Battaglia
University Dean Henry Krell urg-ed
an audience of some sixty
students, faculty and administra-tors
to become aware of alcohol
misuse on campus. He further en-couraged
all to become involved in
an alcohol misuse task force that
will be formed in the near future.
The appeal was made at the Cam-pus
Alcohol Conference held
Saturday in the Nursing
Auditorium.
The conference included a half-hour
film, "Alcohol & Drugs: Mak-ing
the Decision," and featured
two lecturers, Robert Ryan, co-founder
of the Guenster Rehabili-tation
Center in Bridgeport, and
Mrs. Anne Patterson, a member of
the Alcoholism Council of Mid-
Fairfield County and Al-Anon.
Ryan relayed his experiences as
an alcoholic who has abstained
from drinking for ten years. Mean-while,
Patterson, the wife of an
alcoholic, shared her experiences
with the drug which led to the
eventual breakdown of her mar-riage
and led to her involvement in
Al-Anon. A question and answer
period followed each presenta-tion.
Dean Krell noted that while it is
not alcohol but alcohol misuse
that is a problem, he pointed out it
is a serious problem nonetheless.
He presented figures to the group
pointing out that eighty percent of
all students put up for disciplinary
problems in the past two years
have been involved in alcohol-related
incident. Krell also said
that dorm damage peaked in the
1979-80 school year to an all-time
high of more than $49,000. The ma-jority
of the damage occured be-tween
Thursday and Sunday
nights as a result of alcohol use.
Francis Moy, S.J., university
chaplain, said after the con-
McCarron Resigns Post
ference that he felt "alcohol
misuse is uniquely a problem
shared by all aspects of the com-munity."
He added that the pro-blem
should not be spoken of in
the amount of dollars and cents
but in "human suffering" involved
for the individuals. Dam Merrigan,
S.J., who worked with Campus
Ministry in the spring of 1979
school year, sees the alcohol
misuse on campus as a "com-munity
problem" which must be
solved "by the students and for
the students." Merrigan, who has
a qualified background in alcohol
awareness, is currently working
on his dissertation on a related
topic and hopes to become more
involved in Fairfield's efforts to
deal with alcohol misuse in the
future.
The university first targeted its
energy towards this problem on
campus in 1975 when the Universi-ty
Council formed an ad-hoc com-mittee
on the matter. The commit-tee
dissolved the same year after
issuing a report, but it was reform-ed
in 1977 when a near fatality on
campus occured as a result of a
student being intoxicated. In 1979,
the first conference was held in
April under the direction of Mer-rigan.
At least one participant in the
conference expressed a fear by
saying he hoped the conference
and task force "is not the same
merry-go-round we often get on
because since 1975 it seems that
this is the third time around."
by Robert Grlbbon
After thirteen years as under-graduate
registrar, the Rev.
George H. McCarron, S.J., is
resigning as of March 1,1981. Mr.
Robert C. Russo, presently univer-sity
registrar, will assume the
undergraduate responsibilities.
Fr. McCarron, a native of New-ton,
Massachusetts, received his
undergraduate education at Bos-ton
College, graduating in 1933.
That year he entered the Society
of Jesus and was ordained in 1944.
Fr. McCarron came to his pre-sent
post at Fairfield in 1968.
Since his arrival he has witnessed
many changes. In 1968 there were
about 1600 students and one
undergraduate school, the College
of Arts and Sciences. "Registra-tion
was a tedious process, done
on a first come-first served basis,
entirely by hand. "It wasn't un-common,"
recalls Fr. McCarron,
"to see students lined up at 3 a.m.
in the morning."
"Fairfield 'went on to the com-puter'
in the early 70's, making it
possible to complete registration
in a fraction of the time. Class lists
which previously took two typists
all summer to prepare are now
ready in 24 hours. Data for statisti-cal
reports and lists of majors,
faculty course loads, grade re-ports,
academic averages, etc., are
now readily available. Thanks to
computers the registrar's office
has been able to cope with the
growing enrollment without ad-ding
to staff."
Some of Fairfield University's
attributes, as viewed by Fr. McCar-ron,
are its small size and its per-sonal
student-teacher relation-ships.
He states, "The professors
at Fairfield are very generous with
their time and they go out of their
FUSA Cabinet
===== Rated "Competentj j
Fr. McCarron is soon to resign as registrar. [Photo by Kevin Kumke]
way to help students." Over the
years Fr. McCarron has tried to
preserve this personal aspect of
Fairfield by keeping class sizes
reasonable. Sometimes he must
"protect the faculty from them-selves."
Fr. McCarron explains, "I
have one hundred students, all of
which prefer professor A. Only
thirty-five can be in professor A's
class. The other sixty-five must go
to professors B, C and D. Some of
these students then go to pro-fessor
A to get a note to be admit-ted
into his class. I have to try to
keep a balance and protect overly
generous professors from them-selves.
This way professor A's
workload is not unbearable and
professor D's below average." Fr.
McCarron's work has sometimes
made him unpopular, but he
shrugs it off and says "you can't
please everyone. There is an old
saying, if you can please 60% of
the people you're doing pretty
well." He says with a grin, "I think
I've accomplished that."
Over the years Fr. McCarron has
had personal relationships with
many students. He has gotten to
know some of them well enough
to perform their wedding cere-monies.
It is his association with
the students he will miss most
when he retires. "I really enjoyed
my association with the students
and will certainly miss them.
Working with young people has
kept me feeling young—maybe
not physically but certainly men-tally."
Fr. McCarron is "not just aban-doning
the office come March 1.1
plan to be available during the
transition period to assist the next
registrar."
[Ed. Note: Parts of this story are
excerpts from "Fr. McCarron
Makes Way for the New Guard,"
which appeared in the Feb. 1 edi-tion
of "Campus Currents," Vol. 3,
No.9.]
by Philip McGinty
The Government Operations
Committee of the student legisla-ture
rated all thirteen FUSA
Cabinet members as "competent"
or "competent plus" in a review
presented to the legislature Wed-nesday,
January 28.
The committee reviewed the
cabinet members "to determine
whether or not they are doing their
jobs," informed Kathy O'Brien,
Chairman of the Government
Operations Committee. O'Brien
stated that the committee placed
each student government member
in one of the following categories;
less than competent, competent,
or competent plus.
A list of questions prepared by
the committee served as criteria for
the ratings. Each cabinet member
was asked questions concerning
his interaction with others in the
cabinet, his problems and subse-quent
methods of solution, and
the amount of time spent in the of-fice
or at the job.
Senior Brian Bellows, Attorney
General of FUSA, received a "com-petent"
rating for his efforts as At-torney
General, Dorm Council
Liaison, and head of the Beach
Association. Bellows has also
overseen the Student Court and
worked on the United Way and
Muscular Dystrophy drives. The
committee commented that al-though
the results of Bellows'
work may not always be seen, he
"does work hard."
The committee rated junior Dan-ny
Allen as "competent plus" for
his service to student entertain-ment
as Co-Director of SEC. Along
with promoting Oakrooms, Fair-fest
and the Southside Johnny
concert, Allen contributed to Arts
and Lectures events. Allen com-mented
that entertainment events
would have gone better if the
publicity for them had been better.
Senior Kevin McColgan, the se-cond
Co-Director of SEC, was also
rated as "competent plus" by the
committee. In addition to his in-volvement
with Oakrooms and big-ger
concerts, McColgan proposed
the idea of conducting student
surveys and conventions to insure
that the type of entertainment of-fered
on campus is what students
really want. McColgan has sug-gested
a Texas barbecue for later
this semester.
The committee viewed senior
Lynne Desmond, Co-Director of
Arts and Lectures, as "competent
plus" for her success in providing
the university with cultural ac-tivities.
As Chairman of the United
Way, Desmond raised money and
exposed students to the value of
the organization. The success of
the Gordon Liddy lecture and the
Trent-a-Mime performance were
also due to Desmond's efforts.
Desmond strongly encourages
more Input from students concer-ning
future possibilities for
cultural events.
Senior Jeanne Luglio, the se-cond
Co-Director of Arts and Lec-continued
on page 2