Don’t forget to add one of these to your college shopping list, class of 2018.

On September 28th we received a tip from a heated Wallach resident who had been on the 9th floor of Wallach when a fire alarm didn’t sound. Now, we know that sounds like great news. Fire alarms go off on this campus so often that a solid few days without an alarm is kind of like a gift from the CU gods. But on the fateful night described by our tipster, fire alarms were going off in every part of Wallach except floor nine. Meaning that there could have been a fire engulfing Wallach while the entire 9th floor casually played Cards Against Humanity and sat around looking like this.

Somehow, we foolishly imagined that Housing would fix this. Flash forward over five weeks and the Wallach fire alarms are still out of service. As in they don’t work. As in, if your freshman roommate, green to the world and living alone for their first time, puts the electric kettle on the stovetop and sets your little Wallach kitchen aflame, you can’t pull the fire alarm. Or, if some scrub on your floor, eager to celebrate his 19th birthday, trips with a lit match in his hand and turns your once wonderful Wallach hallway into an oven, you cannot pull the fire alarm.

See, unlike our oft-malfunctioning and frustratingly locked printers or a communal toilet ravaged by your inconsiderate floormates, a fire alarm kind of has to be in order or else everyone is fucked toast.

Not to get too philosophical about it all but a wise man once said, “The safety of the people shall be the highest law.” It was Cicero. Get it together, Columbia.

Red fire extinguisher tilted at zany angle and looking kind of shiny on an expansive white background via Shutterstock