If I am to never see the spring 2002 residents of Long Hall ever again, I’ll know that they probably all flunked out because of the end-of-the-semester happenings that constantly seemed to get the dormitory residents off track from their normal dorm lives.

It was all funny how things seem to turn out in the end. It’s the same moral that the little boy who cried wolf learned. Little pranks that happen over and over again start to become ignored and when something that’s “almost” real occurs, many people end up getting hurt or getting in trouble or just learning a valuable lesson.

It would take me forever to explain to you these happenings play-by-play, but I’ll attempt to sum it all up for you. It actually all began at the beginning of the semester, but we’ll start on Monday, April 30. I sat in my room typing fearlessly at the computer, hoping that at least one sentence that I typed would make sense.

After taking a break and pouring a bowl of stale Apple Jacks, I heard the irritating noise that came from the fire alarm. It was nearly 11 o’clock and the last thing I felt like doing was running down eight flights of stairs all to stand outside for hours waiting for the famous wave to come back in.

After nearly two hours, we were signaled to come back in. But wait, there’s more. Every individual that walked had to show his hands to show that the red ink from the fire alarm hadn’t somehow appeared on their hands. Now maybe it isn’t my position to say this, but what idiot would wait in that line knowing what was going on, and walk up to the fire marshal with ink covered hands?

The very next night, the alarm was pulled again, and suddenly it seemed as if the Long Hall residents were starting to enjoy these late night roll calls. When everyone thought that the immaturity was over with, it happened again.

That Saturday night, my roommate and I invited some friends over to play Playstation and eat some pizza. As I walked down to check some of them in and get the late pizza order from a very unintelligent looking lady, I heard it. The fire alarm had been pulled and it was almost one in the morning.

Visitation time was running out and the pizza was getting colder. After an hour of waiting, we were allowed back into the building with 15 minutes left of visitation. Trying to hurry and get back up to the dreary eighth floor, I found myself trapped in the elevator. But that’s another story.

On Monday, May 6, the first day of finals, residents were awakened by the eerie fire alarm. Like many people on my floor, I ignored it and went back to sleep. After a while, it seemed as if the noise was getting louder and louder. I angrily shot out of bed like a bullet, put on a pair of flip-flops and attempted to waken my roommate. He refused to get out of bed saying, “It’s just another stupid alarm,” but not quite in those exact terms.

I finally made it down the stairs, slowly realizing that I was the only one running down the staircase. When I made it outside, I was instructed to go to the back of the building. One of my friends was sitting on a set of bleachers, cramming for his morning exam. He then informed me that a bomb threat had been called in and that there was a suspicious briefcase sitting in front of the building.

I called my roommate from my cell phone (in which I was out of daytime minutes) and explained to him that he really needed to come out of the building. Now I knew that we were going to be outside for a long time, but I had no idea for how long.

Trying to pass time during the evacuation, after visiting a friend in Calecas and then being booted out of there, eating lunch, studying in the library, looking at the fish in Gouaux Hall, making a quick visit by The Nicholls Worth office and standing outside for another hour watching the bomb squad send the robot across the street, nearly five hours had passed by. Some of the dorm residents had left all of their study material for finals in the buildings and had to take their finals totally unprepared.

It was amazing to see the looks on some of the faces of the residents when they were told that there was a briefcase in front of the building which was said to have been a bomb, but turned out only to be some left behind luggage that a student had accidentally left behind while loading to go home. Total faces of fear. Talk about a scare.

I got back in my room, poured a glass of milk, fed my fish and smiled in front of the window at the dorm residents entering the building not in the best of moods. It has been said that all things happen for a reason.

After all of those false alarms, I think that the residents actually realized what a fire alarm was really for and that emergencies can really happen right here at Nicholls.