Let the scene be set; it is after midnight, and you’re ready and cozy in your room on campus. All is well, until a loud blare forces you to grab your clothing and your student identification card and walk outside.
That blare would be the sound of the fire alarms, and this winter has seen some very ill-timed occurrences that contribute to a noise problem in Rowan’s student housing facilities.
As a student myself, I live in Holly Pointe Commons, and this semester alone, I can count three separate occasions on which I have woken up or been startled by these alarms and the evacuation that follows from them. This alarm has gone off enough times that it feels like an unfortunate pattern.
And it certainly isn’t the first time that Holly Pointe or Rowan has seen these issues with fire alarms either. In the fall of 2024, I was still living in Holly Pointe Commons, as it was my first semester as a college student, and consistently, I was woken up to the sound of the room and hallway alarms audibly clashing in the first weeks of the school year.
Sometimes they are not frequent at all, and I can go weeks, if not months, without hearing it, which, of course, I’m fine with. However, it does make me question what the root of all these alarms is, because it is hard to believe that any of these are intentional, considering the hours at which they occur.
Those abrasive events are not the only source of this enduring problem, however, and not the only one I’ve experienced.
Many times in the night, I am lodged in my dorm, either doing work or ready to rest up and shut my eyes. At this time, especially on weekends, there is a lot of rambunctious noise and crowds of people who are often going out in some capacity or just having fun in numbers.
College housing is a unique phenomenon in the grand scheme of things. It’s hard to think of any setting where so many young adults are all bunched together for the sake of living arrangements. These people are spending almost every waking moment on campus, and these buildings are where they return to center themselves.
Because of those living arrangements, there are hours during the late evening and nighttime when loud noises are prohibited. For Rowan University in particular, they run from 10 p.m. until 8 a.m. on school nights. So it would come as a rude awakening to many when external factors intrude on those same hours in which many are just trying to get their sleep in.
There’s obviously nothing wrong with a bit of fun, but it does become a bit much at times when others, like myself, are looking for peace in our voluntary seclusion.
If there is a bottom line to the noise around student buildings and Rowan’s facilities, it is that, while disturbing in multiple forms, it is something that I have at least learned to live with. Though there should be ways to counteract this for those who seek quiet.
In terms of noise coming from individuals, oftentimes I’ve heard them come and go very quickly, so not too much prolonged nuisance there. Even when the source is maybe a room filled with a lot of people, it’s usually solvable by contacting an official, whether it be for Rowan housing or somebody else.
Alarms are a different animal, as they happen at a frequency which, on the surface, feels spontaneous.
If there was a log of some sort for the where, when, and the why, if obtainable, I think it would maybe ease curiosities for those who wake up confused in the middle of the night or evening, wondering why they’re rushing out of the door.
It’s not so much about stopping these events, which is quite a lofty ambition, but rather mitigating and being able to explain them.
For comments/questions about this story, DM us on Instagram @thewhitatrowan or email [email protected]
