Thanks for that. I googled it. It seems to require reporting of drug and alcohol offenses, but not enforcement of them. I will add, in my 7 or so years on the Board of Trustees, I never saw a Clery Act report and was never made aware of its requirements. It is certainly something the Board should see. I also was a member and received the newsletter/journal of the Association of Governing Boards, and even went to some conferences. Never heard of the Clery Act. https://agb.org/
Perhaps your college isn’t covered.
I know some campus cops at a couple of different colleges and they all said the reporting requirements were strictly enforced. It’s because of them I even know about Cleary. It’s not something other cops need to deal with or know about.
I don’t think a private school can strip you of your constitutional rights.
Was that before or after the national drinking age was raised to 21? That would have been somewhere around 37 years ago, and it could have had an effect on how colleges handled their alcohol policies, since before, the majority of college students would have been of legal drinking age, and after, they would not.
I could see doing a planned drill at the beginning of a term, before classes start, etc. Knowing where to go depends on where you are in the building, verdad? You might be in your room, or in the shower, or in the TV room, or…?
When I think of college, I can see why it would be hard to make sure everyone was out. I mean, if 200 people live in that dorm, some will be at the library and others will be getting a meal, etc. At any given time, you don’t know who’s there and who isn’t. But if your goal is to make sure everyone knows how to get out, you have to know that everyone participated, and OP’s daughter apparently didn’t.
And couldn’t they simply knock on every door to make sure everyone gets out? Is there some less intrusive way? If it’s a drill, they don’t have to find the source of a fire. I’ll assume there’s some loud alarm that would wake anybody who was sleeping, so even knocking on the door seems unnecessary.
Are the residents forced to stand outside in the freezing cold (or the sweltering heat)? All in all, it seems like a bad idea to add the contraband issue.
Well I hadn’t thought of that. It had been 21 for as long as I was interested. Washington Ste for what that’s worth. And an excellent point because my Freshman year was '85-86 and :
“In 1984, Congress passed the National Minimum Drinking Age Act, which required states to raise their ages for purchase and public possession to 21 by October 1986”
Still, that’s pretty much in line with the rest of the school’s culture (tiny private liberal arts college), but their position on it might have changed since (along with the nation’s deterioration of personal accountability and kids staying off my lawn…)
When my college conducted fire drills, they did do one pretty early in the year for each dorm and I believe they just told everyone to be there for the drill, to come outside, and to get their name checked off. It took a few minutes and I remember everyone being annoyed at the one dude who sauntered out 10 minutes later because we all had to stand out there until he was accounted for and the drill ended.
My first roommate would ignore knocking and the RA would have to go back into the possibly flaming building to roust her. The building was rated to burn to the ground in 8 minutes, which it had done once before. It was then rebuilt with the same insulation (horsehair). Unfortunately, ants got into the system and kept setting the alarm off.
That’s not the point. They check to ensure nobody ignored the fire alarm. The screeching siren and flashing lights are more effective than knocking on the door because they go on for many (sometimes tens of) minutes.
The policy when I was in college, and which I assume is similar at most others, is that you are not allowed to stay in the building when the fire alarms go off. Seems simple enough. While it sucks for the deep sleeper who gets caught in bed, they’re really looking for the students who are hiding under the bed, or in the closets/wardrobes because they don’t want to put on pants and stand outside in the cold for a half hour.
The RA’s are doing this check after the situation is cleared by the fire department. They want to get back to their rooms just as much as everyone else, but the nature of their search means they could turn something up, and as the previous posters have noted, they can’t ignore some contraband.
I vaguely recall one fire drill at the start of the school year, but there were nearly monthly incidents causing the alarm to go off, usually involving microwave popcorn.
I was in college in the late 1980s in upstate New York and if the fire alarm went off in the middle of a winter night, yes, we had to stand outside for a while. (There were neighboring dorms, so I suppose you could go in one of them. I can’t remember if that’s what we did.)
Maybe they should be looking for microwave popcorn rather than drugs and booze.
I’ve heard of private companies that banned microwave popcorn because of the disruption caused by the fire alarms. (I think one company documented the cost, as the fire department charged for these call outs.)
Bearing in mind that these college students are adults, not children (legally) like in a public high school, I wondered what they are obligated to do. IANAL so I googled: fire alarm not leaving building legal
First result, from Quora:
No, you are not legally obligated to leave . However, deliberately choosing not to leave in the event of a fire (which the alarm is warning you about) does mean that you can be charged with two things: Disrupting fire service operations, and wilfully endangering the lives of emergency personnel.
The answer goes on with other interesting info. The person writing it (Dave Lang) says he’s a firefighter.
When you are admitted, you choose whether to go to that college. If you register, you agree to its rules.
Right, they’re not like a customer in a restaurant or retail store, they’re residents with (the college equivalent of) a lease that has binding terms and conditions. The students won’t be arrested, they’ll be sanctioned by the school per the terms in their housing agreement.
I do want to point out that it’s nothing new. I was a Resident Advisor from 1994-1996 at a major state university, and our fire drill policy was that the RA had to go into each room and verify that everyone had left during the fire drill. We weren’t actually inspecting for anything, but if we went in and saw a bottle of booze (or a bong, or whatever) on someone’s desk who was underage, we were supposed to note it and follow up.
Usually that follow-up took the form of “Hey- next time hide your shit better.” unless said resident was someone who was already having issues, at which point it would be formally escalated.
It wasn’t an excuse to inspect rooms at all. And we weren’t expected to key into everyone’s room in non planned fire alarms either.
It sounds like the low-stakes documentation report they have basically is the same thing. It’s just a “knock it off”, but if someone starts evolving into a real problem they have the documentation they need.
And FWIW, our fire drills were always in the afternoon/evening, and not in the dead of winter either.
The actual room check was to “key in”, which meant that we had one of the master keys that opened every dorm room (of which there were 5 or 6), and we’d basically open the door, take 2-4 large steps into the room, look around in a sweeping motion, turn, leave, lock door behind us. Each of us took our own floor (~50 rooms) and did this as fast as humanly possible.
Something had to be VERY obvious- like a handle of vodka by itself on a desk, a massive bong, a litter box, or a hamster cage (pets were forbidden) for us to notice it and remember it after going through 50 rooms.
I think the only thing I ever noticed was that one guy had his girlfriend semi-permanently shacked up (saw all the makeup, etc… on the sink), and his roommate hadn’t spoken up about it. All it took was a comment to him that she can’t live in the room, and a follow up with the roommate to verify, and it was good.
Then there’s the time I shook down a room full of freshmen drinking beer for Christmas gift money for our custodians, but that’s another story.
Even rules that you didn’t know about, that weren’t in the Student Handbook, that your parents didn’t know about AND that you never had the chance to agree to?
I’d ask the OP if the school informed them of room searches…
.
As a college student in a private “Christian” college in the early ‘70s, we had plenty of repressive rules ("No boys in the girls’ dorms except noon to three on Sundays" Huh?).
BUT no one EVER went in our rooms without Probable Cause, which never came up during my four years.
And we never needed Fire Drills. The handbook said “When a fire alarm goes off, head outside immediately by the nearest exit”. There were maps if “nearest” was confusing.
I wonder how often they have these “Fire Drills”, and, if more than once a semester, aren’t they at least partly just a ruse to search students’ rooms?
As a parent, I’d use this as a teachable moment with (my wife and) step-daughter, and remind her that she does have a right to privacy… etc etc.
“In the early '70s” is probably the explanatory phrase.