The perpetrator’s weapon

Close your eyes. Imagine it’s 2 A.M. on a Thursday night. You have a full 8 hours of sleep and the rest of your life ahead of you. Until you hear it–the beeps. Not small, tranquil beeps, but the deafening, monstrous beeps of the Carman fire alarm. For the past two weeks, many Columbia freshmen didn’t have to imagine this; they lived through this hell multiple times.

Standing outside of my dorm at 2 in the morning with hundreds of other Carman residents, I heard lots of speculation about why we were in this situation for the fourth time in a week. “The dorm is broken!” and “Who the hell is juuling with their window closed? You fucking idiot.” were some things I heard possibly ten times. But last Thursday, a Carman-wide email was sent out informing us that there was no accident; someone has been pulling the fire alarm each and every time. As expected, students were furious. One friend said about the serial alarm puller, “I want the guillotine.” Another claimed, “If I catch them, it’s hands.”

So why exactly are they doing this? What are they gaining? Maybe somebody just got too fed up with the tiny washing machines in the laundry room or the lingering athlete-sweat smell in the elevators. It’s possible that their anger over these very real issues was taken out on the whole dorm. Maybe they snapped. Or maybe this is a case of too much drinking after a night out at Mel’s which caused someone to take a tumble into the fire alarm. Three times. It’s also a real possibility that someone is sleepwalking. Their sleep alter-ego, nicknamed Worst Person Alive, has been inflicting terror on the dorm in this oddly twisted way. These are just some possibilities.

Dissatisfied with my own answers, I went around Carman asking for other theories. Here are some that I found the most reasonable:

“They get a thrill from watching everyone walk down the stairs because they’re morally against elevators.”

“Some men just want to watch the world burn.”

“The gentle scream of the fire alarm is the only way they can drift off to sleep.”

“It honestly might be a fetish.”

All of these are very real and well thought out possibilities, but I don’t think we will ever truly know the truth. I don’t even really care about the identity of the fire alarm puller, I just want to know: who are you? Like, as a person. Why are you like this? And if you happen to actually be reading this article, my message to you is: please change.

image via Bwog Archives