Drill? Not a drill?
A semester of college never properly starts until the first time the fire alarm goes off in your dorm. As you can guess, that's exactly what happened this morning. I had returned to my room for the two hour break I have between my morning classes and my afternoon class. It took me a while to realize what it was...the fire bell sounded more like someone with a really obnoxious alarm clock rather than a real alarm. As soon as I figured out what it was (I peeped out the door and saw an RA knocking on all the doors), I told my roommate to climb out of bed and stick something on her feet.
I overheard a small snippet of conversation between two RAs on the way out of the building to the effect of this not being a drill, but I wasn't certain if I had heard them correctly at the time. The south wing girls gathered in the parking lot closest to us until the RA in charge of us told us we had to stand in the field across the street. I was still trying to figure out if I had heard what I thought I heard from those two RAs, then I catch a whiff of smoke. I look around and discover that a girl directly behind me had just lit a Marlboro and was huffing away. I mean, lighting up a cigarette when everyone else around her is trying to figure out if it's a drill or the real thing? Could this girl have exhibited any worse taste than that? (Granted, I think smoking exhibits incredibly poor taste period, but smoking during a evacuation that might have been for a real fire?...that's just wrong on so many different levels!) Anyway, it turns out it wasn't a drill, which probably means some jerk pulled the fire alarm as a joke.
I think North Texas needs to implement the same fine that UNL did for pranksters pulling the fire alarm (I think they had raised it to $2,000)...once UNL raised the fine, the pranksters stopped.