Students have expressed their frustrations about false fire alarms across campus over the past year. Although false fire alarms have been going off across all of campus, most of the alarms have been affecting tenants in campus housing.

Students in campus housing said the fire alarms have woken them up in the middle of the night.

“They’re really, really loud,” said Alexis Hayse, freshman psychology major. “Especially in my room. I have been the biggest sounding one. So, when it came off at three in the morning, I sat in my bed for a good 30 minutes, ringing through my head because it was so loud.”

“It’s definitely woken me up in the middle of the night,” said Mackenzie Truax, freshman psychology major. 

Truax said the false fire alarms are “super loud and distracting.”

A false fire alarm was set off Monday in the Health Professions Center, leading four Evansville fire trucks to be called to the scene. Public Safety said the alarm was unfounded, and they are not entirely sure why the smoke detector went off. 

Another fire alarm was set off in the University Center April 12, causing students and faculty to evacuate. There was no public statement as to the cause of this fire alarm.

Students have said they have stopped reacting to the fire alarms in campus housing because they just assume it is a false alarm.

Tyler Jones, sophomore computer science major, said, “It’s at a point where me and my roommate don’t even really react to it because it’s just like, ‘Oh, it happened again.’”

“We’re like, ‘We know it’s going to shut up in, like, two minutes, so we might as well just stay in here,’” Hayse said.

Hayse said Public Safety told her the alarms in her building are not connected to Public Safety, so they have to call every time the alarm is set off.

“We were informed literally the first day we moved in that they are not connected to Public Safety,” Hayse said. “So whenever they get set off, they have no clue. We always have to call, and that was a big concern for me because what if we’re all asleep and there’s actually a fire, and none of us call? Are we just sitting there burning?”