Illinois State University students are tuning out fire alarm evacuation orders and taping over smoke detectors in campus dorms due to frequent fire alarms, raising concerns about whether students will respond when there is a real emergency.
“I know a lot of people evacuated at first, but then, once we got used to the fire alarms going off, people stopped going outside,” junior and former Watterson Towers resident Riley Schou said. “I feel like if there’s an actual fire, a lot of people wouldn’t evacuate because of how much it happens.”
Assistant Director of Fire Safety and Compliance for ISU Environmental Health and Safety Adam Streenz said the fire alarms went off in ISU housing and connected dining centers a total of 54 times in 2025. That's more than once each week.
According to students, repeated alarms, especially at inconvenient times, quickly led to alarm fatigue.
Sophomore and former Watterson Towers resident Brayan Hernandez said the fire alarms went off “way too much” last academic year and mentioned a specific fire alarm evacuation instance at 3 a.m. during the winter.
Junior and former Watterson Towers resident Faith Hintz voiced similar concerns.
“[The fire alarms went off] all the time, and always at the most inconvenient times too, like it would be in the winter when everyone's so cold at 2 a.m.,” Hintz said. “That’s honestly one of the biggest perks of not living in the dorm is not having to deal with that.”
Most alarms are "not serious"
During a recent fire sprinkler demonstration outside of Stevenson Hall, Normal Fire Department Public Information Officer Matt Swaney said a majority of these fire alarm incidents are not “serious incidents.”
Swaney said he only runs into a serious incident, including room fires or mechanical fires, every couple of years. Most fire alarm incidents consist of minor cooking problems like burnt popcorn in a microwave, smoking and vaping.
According to Environmental Health and Safety’s Fire Log, one serious fire incident has been reported so far this year; an intentionally burned toilet paper dispenser in Watterson Towers in March.
Some students have speculated that dorm fire alarms are more sensitive than household fire alarms, causing them to go off more often. According to Swaney, this is only speculation and does not hold any truth.
“The dorm fire alarms aren’t more sensitive, necessarily, but what happens is there is just more devices in those buildings,” Swaney said. “Whenever you have more detectors, there’s more likelihood that they could be set off by smoke or by dust, or by vaping, or by things that shouldn’t be happening in that building.”
According to Safety and Compliance Specialist for ISU Environmental Health and Safety Alan Leger, the fire alarm systems are not set to be any more sensitive than other fire alarm systems on campus or in the community.
Swaney emphasized that failing to evacuate for every fire alarm not only puts yourself in danger in the case of a real emergency, but also puts firefighters and other residents in danger.
“We do run into problems where people don’t evacuate, and that creates problems for us because if there is a true emergency, we have to get them out of the building, and now we’re having to concentrate on them rather than the emergency at hand,” Swaney said. “Our firefighters want to get there and focus on the emergency at hand and not having to evacuate people that just didn’t feel like getting out of bed.”
Illinois State Fire Marshal Michele Pankow said she understands the “drive towards complacency” with people failing to evacuate during every fire alarm but warns of the consequences.
“When the alarm goes off, get out, because it’s not until it’s a real deal that you're not gonna realize it,” Pankow said.
Schou, Hintz and Hernandez said they were rarely or never notified of the cause of a fire alarm after the incident. There was an occasional email or text from a Resident Assistant [RA] or a sign by the elevators, but most often, they were left without any explanation about what had triggered the alarm.
High numbers of fire alarms also cause some students to start taping over smoke detectors to avoid setting off the fire alarms. Junior and former Cardinal Court resident Kaya Deleon Terrazas said she personally knew several people who would do this.
Pankow warned students of the dangers of taping over smoke detectors.
“It’s not just that your alarm doesn’t go off and you’re not getting out, what also happens is there are other people in the building who maybe know you're not out so they might do something to try to help you and now you have not only endangered yourself, you're endangering others around you and the first responders as well,” Pankow said.
University Housing Services Assistant Director of Marketing and Communications Hillary Campos said verbal warnings were issued to all students caught not evacuating during a fire alarm, but there was no official or strict system to keep track of who evacuated.
“If for some reason they do not evacuate, there is a documentation process for that, and there is a potential conduct process for that as well,” Campos said.
“The RA of their floor should be checking their floor. Obviously, they do need to head downstairs to assist,” Campos said. “They’re not gonna key in the rooms or anything like that, but they are going to do a quick look around to make sure before they head down.”
According to Campos, students are warned of these consequences at Preview [orientation], during floor meetings, in emails and in housing policies and procedures. Schou, Hintz and Hernandez said they have never heard of anyone receiving any kind of consequence for not evacuating or heard that there are set consequences in place.
The Office of the Illinois State Fire Marshal shared that September and October are the peak months for fires in dormitory properties, with cooking being the main cause of these fires, according to the National Fire Protection Association.
