Mirror - Vol. 01, No. 01 - September 22, 1977

              Alarm
Rash
Strikes
by Patricia M. Reid
Due to the excessive number of
false fire alarms on campus the
Fairfield Fire Department will not
respond to an alarm unless they
receive a call from Security to
confirm that there is indeed a fire
in progress. Within an eleven day
time period a total of fifteen false
alarms have been reported.
According to Mark R. Lom-bards
new Director of Security,
the Fire Department stopped
responding to campus as of the
third false alarm. Mr. Lombardi
pointed out that "too many lives
are in danger" during a false
alarm for the Fire Department to
respond. The director cited a near
incident during one of the first
alarms, saying, "The engines were
on their way here and received an
emergency call from the com-munity.
Luckily, we were able to
turn the trucks back before they
had come too far." In responding
to a false alarm the lives of the
firemen called out are in jeopardy
along with the lives of countless
Fairfield citizens should an actual
fire occur simultaneously.
Ordinarily, when a real fire is
reported, a full complement,
consisting of three engines and
two ladder trucks, is sent to the
scene. If the Fire Department had
been following normal pro-cedures
for the fifteen false
alarms, only two engines would
have remained to service the
entire Fairfield community.
In addition to the dangers
imposed on the town during a
false alarm, University residents
are now in a perilous situation
should a real fire break out on
campus. Security must first
investigate to determine the
presence of an actual fire before
calling the Fire Department. Mr.
Lombardi states, "There will be a
delay if there is a real fire. The
students have jeopardized them-selves."
The most obvious danger
is the reaction time lost on the
part of the Fire Department, but
equally hazardous is the fact that
many students have stopped
responding to the alarms. Mark
Lombardi pointed out that
students on the third and fourth
floors of Northwest have dis-mantled
the bull horns from
which the alarm is sounded. As a
result, many students may be
trapped in their rooms, unable to
hear the alarm, in the event of a
real fire.
Patterns have been evolving in
the series of false alarms. For the
most part, the alarms that are
pulled are located on the ground
floors of the dorms. Last Saturday
night five alarms were pulled,
four of which took place between
3:22 a.m. and 4:10 a.m. Student
Services has the names of two
student suspects possibly re-sponsible
in the rash of Saturday's
alarms. "Saturday night seemed
to indicate it's the same group of
people involved," stated Mr.
Lombardi. He added that Security
is "trying a couple of different
things" designed to apprehend
the individuals responsible for
pulling false alarms.
The charge for pulling a false
alarm, according to the director,
is criminal mischief in the first
degree which is a felony. "There
is a two-fold system for anyone
apprehended in the case of a false
alarm," explains Mr. Lombardi,
"The student is subject to
disciplinary action within the
University and will be prosecuted
civilly. The University will not
drop the charges."
THE
FAIRFIELD FAIRFIELD UNIVERSITY, FAIRFIELD, CONN. 06430 MIRROR
Vol. 1, No. 1 Fairfield, Connecticut 06430 September 22,1977
Town Officials Charged;
Pres. Heads Up Probe
by Ralph Tremaglio
Amidst allegations of corrup-tion
among town officials in
Fairfield, University President
Rev. Thomas R. Fitzgerald was
chosen by the local Board of
Selectmen to serve on the newly
appointed Ethics Panel of the
Town of Fairfield. Sworn in on
August 17, Fr. Fitzgerald was
elected chairman by the panel
composed of prominent, private
citizens.
As Chairman of the Ethics
Panel, Fr. Fitzgerald is the
spokesman for a group now
involved in a local political
storm. The University President
outlined the reasons for the
creation of the panel, explaining,
"Charges of corruption began
flying around concerning primari-ly
zoning matters and real estate
interests normally investigated by
the Board of Selectman. How-ever,
in this case, their select-men's
innocence has been
questioned."
Charges of corruption were
made during the past summer by
Dr. James Kellis, former Chairman
of the Democratic Town Commit-tee
in Fairfield. Kellis claimed
intertwined interests connecting
Paul Winter Consort
The Paul Winter consort in the gym on Monday night offered a musical
experience of versatility to a sizeable audience.
Photos by: Frank Godfrey
the Zoning Board and the First
Selectman. Allegations of corrup-tion,
usually handled by the
Board of Selectmen, needed new
channels of investigation. The
Board appointed a committee of
five private citizens to use their
authority to make investigations
that the Selectmen normally
would have made.
The Ethics Panel includes Mr.
Stephen Calpin, Sr. of General
Electric Corp., Mrs. Jean Sturges,
Mr. Samuel Hawley, Chairman of
the People's Savings Bank, and
Justice Samuel Melitz, retired
Justice of the State Supreme
Court.
Fr. Fitzgerald stated that the
panel's resolution is "broad
enough to investigate town
employees." Nevertheless, the
Ethics Panel is an ad hoc.
committefcof sorts. The President
said that the group is directing its
efforts toward "allegations pri-marily
against the Zoning Board,
but also involving the First
Selectman and other town
officials." Fr. Fitzgerald cited that
the panel feels a two-fold
purpose: "To look at the charges
and to prepare an ordinance to
establish a permanent (ethics)
committee."
Concerning the latest develop-ments
in the brewing local issue,
the President remarked, "The
panel concluded that there was
one chief source of the
allegations —Dr. Kellis, who inci-dentally
has been a part-time
faculty member in our Graduate
School of Education." The panel
cont. on pg. 3
Curriculum Revisions Pending
by Patricia M. Reid
Revisions in the core curriculum
settled upon last May by the Cur-riculum
Committee are presently
before the faculty for
consideration. Discussion of the
proposed changes was postponrd
at the first General Faculty Meet-ing
of the semester held on Sept-ember
14. Dr. Richard Regan,
Faculty Secretary, has scheduled
the next faculty meetings for Oct-ober
4 and 18 at which times the
curriculum proposals will be the
main order of business.
Dr. Regan, who served as Chair-man
of the Curriculum Committee
•ast year, explained the reasons
for revising the core curriculum,
saying, "The purpose is two-fold;
To give the freshman a broader
educational experience in the first
year and to postpone the choice
of major in a real sense at least for
the first year." Regarding the large
number of students each year who
switch majors, Dr. Regan added,
"We're not at all sure senior year
in high school is a good time to
choose a major."
With the exception of a few ma-jor
programs such as Accounting
and Pre-Med where the sequence
of required major courses is too ri-gid
to allow the shuffling of
courses, most incoming freshmen
would be exposed to a wider var-iety
of liberal arts according to the
proposed changes. In keeping
with the idea of broadening the
freshman's exposure to the liberal
arts, the Curriculum Committee
has designed freshmen core
courses to fit within one semester
in each of the required areas thus
eliminating many of the year-long
courses presently in existence.
As set forth in the Curriculum
Committee's May report, the
freshmen core will consist of one
course in each of the areas:
I—Natural Science—Mathema-tics
II —History—Social Sciences
III —Philosophy—Religious Stu-dies.
IV— English Composition— Lit-erature—
Fine Arts.
V—Foreign Language.
The course areas are inter-changeable
with respect to which
semester they may be taken, but
each of the above areas should be
covered during freshman year.
After the above freshmen program
is completd the student is free to
"determine his own general edu-cation
program subject only to
distribution requirements" ac-cording
to the proposed revisions.
The number of required core
courses has not been diminished
by the Curriculum Committee, but
the revisions are aimed at giving
the student more leeway in ar-ranging
his or her own schedule.
The one proposed core change
that could have significant effects
upon either the Philosophy De-partment
or the Department of
Religious Studies is the option for
the student to elect to take a third
semester of Religious Studies as a
substitution for the now required
third semester of Philosophy.
Distribution requirements for
core courses after freshman year
will be as follows:
Area Courses
I 1 Natural Science
1 Mathematics or Logic
cont. on pg. 3
Rev. Thomas R. Fitzgerald.
Changes
To Mirror
As a result of a decision to in-corporate,
the former University
Voice is now The Fairfield Mirror.
Plans to incorporate The
Fairfield Mirror, formerly the
University Voice, began last
semester. The impetus for
incorporation came from Univers-ity
President Rev. Thomas R.
Fitzgerald who had expressed
concern over the University's
liability for material printed in the
Voice.
Although the student news-paper
was not previously under
administrative censorship, as an
organization within the Univers-ity,
Fairfield could have been
held legally accountable should
the paper have come under fire
for the expression of opinions not
held by the University and for
situations involving libel. Rather
than run the risk of having
administrative censorship impos-ed
on the paper in order to
protect the University, the editors
of the Voice decided to establish
the paper as a separate legal
entity—a private, non-stock corp-oration.
The Fairfield Mirror, Inc.
has retained a lawyer who is in
the process of filing incorporation
papers with the State of
Connecticut.
As a corporation, independent
from the school, the student run
organization is directly respons-ible
for its entire business
operation and the content of the
paper. By incorporating, the
student newspaper is now open to
limitless possibilities for change
and expansion. With its newly
established independence, the
Mirror does not necessarily
reflect the opinions of the
University.