I think in light of what occurred Sunday (high winds, trees, etc.), our basements should be unlocked. It is no longer an issue about "fire safety" or "stairs being unsafe" or any other reason the administration could come up with, but an issue of overall safety.

In a Flyer News article by Jennie Szink, she stated, "Bullman said Facilities considered the costs of not locking basements and attics, such as cutting off access to fuse boxes and tornado shelters, but the everyday safety benefits outweighed them". Well I don't remember hearing about a fire that was cause by a furnace, but I can remember when there was a tornado that ripped through Centerville this summer.

What does it take in order to have it change? Do we have to have a tornado rip through campus and cause injury or death? In case of a tornado are we supposed to run across campus to the glass RecPlex or find a landlord house that has an open basement?

If Residential Properties is so worried about fire issues, why don't they paint off the area where students should not store objects and open the basement up. Have every house know that there will be a fine, or penalty if any storage is in the painted area. Have an appendix in the housing contract right next to the "no kegs policy" for storage. And since this school wants to cut down the basement party scene, establish another fine for "too many people in the basement at one time" because I feel comfortable that this administration would approve it. That way we're "safe" from fire, parties and tornados.

Since we were children we've always been told "when there's a bad storm or tornado the safest place in your house is the basement". The reason for this is simply that windows can break and houses can be shifted and damaged when exposed to high winds (as I'm sure many of us witnessed this past weekend).

So you can understand, given recent events, why the locking of university basements is a concern of mine. Granted, we're not in "tornado alley" per se; but this is an area that has been hit by high-wind, high-danger storms in the past. Why then are the safest locations without making a trek outside (not a good idea) being closed off to us? I've heard much of the reasoning behind the locked basements and despite a lot of the complaints I've always said, "There's nothing we can do about it, and I guess their reasons make sense". But this is one area that I can only imagine the university didn't foresee; the safety provided by a basement.

There were few if any injuries on our campus as a result of the storm and for that we can all be grateful, but had the storm been much worse, things might have been different. There were several moments where experiences from other storms that I've been through surfaced and I thought "maybe we should move to the basem? oh, wait, we can't," which was quite frustrating, especially when compounded by the incessant beeping from those damn fire-alarm systems that are oh-so-sophisticated and never shut up if the power goes out.