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If Only Students were allowed to carry concealed fire extinguishers

Inside Higher Ed:

... More than 100 students have died in student housing fires since 2000, according to Campus Firewatch, a newsletter published by Ed Comeau, former director of The Center for Campus Fire Safety. This has been the deadliest fire year for students since the publication began tracking such data seven years ago. Nearly 1,800 fires burn in student residences each year, and nearly 80 percent of fire-related deaths involving colleges take place in off-campus housing, Comeau says. ...

A student's chance of being gunned down on campus: almost zero.

A student's chance of being caught in a fire in off-campus housing: much better.

Posted by Siva on April 19, 2007 10:52 PM |

Comments

This is exactly my view of various bogeymen, I mean bogeypersons, which the American public will do anything and everything to be safe from. Such bogeys as school shootings, SARS, bird flu and terrorism. The aforementioned dangers are statistical non-events. They are statistical freaks. They are so unlikely to occur that they don't even merit a category in the CDC's rankings for leading causes of death. They don't even merit a sub-category or a sub-category of a sub-category.

Posted by: Jardinero1 [TypeKey Profile Page] | April 20, 2007 09:54 AM

I had another thought. With regard to off-campus fires, maybe it would help if Universities declared their off-campus housing areas "fire-free zones".

Posted by: Jardinero1 [TypeKey Profile Page] | April 20, 2007 09:59 AM

Last semester the campus paper did an article about the change in fire safety in Fraternity and Sorority Houses in the aftermath of a fire years ago, but they also talked about how there are dorms on campus which don't have sprinklers because they were designed before current fire safety standards: http://media.www.dailytarheel.com/media/storage/paper885/news/2006/11/27/InvestigativeTeam/A.Decade.After.The.Ashes-2507769.shtml
And yet today the campus is reporting they are designing a new phone alert system and are trying to get on campus students to carry GPS phones: http://media.www.dailytarheel.com/media/storage/paper885/news/2007/04/20/University/Unc-To.Get.Phone.Alerts-2870650.shtml
Which makes me wonder two things, one why can't they use that money to fix the sprinklers and two, do off campus students just have to take their chances? Oh well!

Posted by: Nani [TypeKey Profile Page] | April 20, 2007 10:44 AM

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