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How fire safe is your school?Experts say many residence halls don't have fire sprinklers
"When we visited the campus, we just assumed the residence hall was safe, just like most parents do," she says. "We assumed it had sprinklers. After the fire, we learned that the residence hall had been written up by the fire marshal's office two years in a row for not having sprinklers, as well as for other safety code violations." Experts say that most parents and students don't realize that many residence halls do not have automatic fire sprinklers. That's why parents and students need to be just as interested in a school's fire-safety record as they are in its academics and football team. "Everyone remembers to ask about Internet capabilities and crime statistics at colleges, but too often we forget about fire safety," says Ed Comeau, director for the Center for Campus Fire Safety. "The truth is that someone who travels is safer than students living in residence halls because many hotels across the nation have automatic fire sprinkler systems and state-of-the-art fire alarm systems. Students should have the same level of safety." With the U.S. Congress recently introducing legislation designating September as National Campus Fire Safety Month, the Center for Campus Fire Safety and Underwriters Laboratories (UL), two not-for-profit organizations dedicated to public safety, are jointly promoting campus fire safety this fall, one of the deadliest seasons for college students. Since January 2000, 75 people have died in fires in student housing, according to the Center for Campus Fire Safety, and nearly 30 percent of those deaths occurred in August and September. "Student living means rooms full of books, paper, bedding, curtains, and clothes - and lots of potential fire hazards in a very small area," says John Drengenberg, manager of Consumer Affairs at UL, which tests products for public safety. "In this situation, even the smallest spark can be deadly." "Schools are not required to make campus fire safety information available to the public," says Comeau, who notes colleges and universities are required to make crime statistics available under the Clery Act. "So, when parents are touring schools with their children, they need to ask the person responsible for fire prevention these important questions."
Other sources of college fire safety information are the 2006 editions of The Best 361 Colleges and The Complete Book of Colleges, both published by the Princeton Review and available in stores as of Tuesday, August 23, 2005. Both publications and The Princeton Review's website list fire safety ratings for schools across the country. Currently, The Princeton Review is the only source where families may reference individual school's fire safety statistics. The Princeton Review's fire safety survey was developed in partnership with the Center for Campus Fire Safety. The threat of fatal campus fires has also caught the attention of federal lawmakers. In addition to the legislation that designates September as National Fire Safety Month, they are currently considering laws that would improve campus fire safety by offering matching federal funds for retrofitting automatic sprinklers in residence halls that do not have them. Another proposed law, the Campus Fire Safety Right-to-Know Act, would call upon schools to provide information about fire safety on their campuses to the U.S. Department of Education. This would provide information for parents and students who are researching schools. Case StudiesClick any of the thumbnail images below to read the stories.
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Gail Minger wishes she had asked more questions about fire safety at her son's school before she sent him off to college. In 1998, Michael Minger, a sophomore, died in a residence hall fire at Murray State University in Kentucky.
· How many fires have occurred on campus in the past year, two years, five years? How many students have been injured or killed? 
