Spring Break
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President Robert Caret
responds to 2001 fire
at Joe West Hall
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"Like any society, we need to cooperate, i.e., the people in the society need to cooperate if any of the rules are going to work. And fooling around in a residence hall, particularly a high rise residence hall is a very dangerous habit to get into."
*Caret said he was not at all perplexed about students' failure to alarms.
"I lived in Joe West for seven months when I first arrived here and I understand why people don't evacuate because you would be evacuating sometimes two and three times a night. And that's what I mean about cooperation, you know, we can't have people pulling false alarms because then you get into the crying wolf syndrome and people don't believe it anymore."
*Caret said that fire safety will continue to be pushed .
"I have had the residence people, each time there has been a fire nationally, use that as a catalyst to ask the questions again: 'Are we comfortable with the processes? What kinds of safety devices do we have, whether it's smoke detectors or sprinklers in various portions of the building?"
"All you can do is ask for cooperation and push, push in an educational sense and really encourage people to participate and make sure the professionals, the residence hall people and the people who are in charge of evacuating the building make sure that happens."
*Caret said he couldn't name anything specific that has been done since the Joe West Hall fire to make sure that residents evacuate.
"Not that I'm aware of, other than the dialogue I've had with the head of residence (halls) and with the vice president of student services. I've had a number of e-mails where we've talked about what's going on in there, but I don't know specifically beyond what I've said. I don't know anymore than what I've indicated. Susan Hansen would be the best one to get that from."
*To pay for the cost of damages the California State University system acts as its own insurance agent.
"We do that by pulling a lot of money in a big pool that we use to pay damages. And based on both your size and the risk factor associated with that and your past record of any kinds of claims, they set a different rate for different campuses, and so it does cost us money. That money comes back charged against the university."
*If the residence hall property is damaged, the housing costs may increase.
"It may indirectly cause the housing to go up in costs if the housing was the issue. Generally, it would be the same issue there: How many claims have you had? How much does it cost? It's just like any insurance company."
"Our rate is higher than some campuses."
