Fire law causes upgrades

When the Inter-Campus Music Center moved into the house previously used by Alpha Delta Phi, they found a new paint job, new carpets on the floors of the rooms and many other improvements the Office of Residential Life made over the summer. But they also found a padlock over the door of the kitchen. Due to changes in the fire code, all the kitchens in houses on the Fraternity Quad require extensive improvement before they can be used. “ResLife said that when the Fire Marshal inspected the house, the kitchen was not remotely up to code, and it would take a large sum of money to upgrade,” junior and ICMC resident Greg Savich said.Director of Residential Life Logan Hazen explained that the problem was not new. “It’s not just [ICMC’s house], it’s all the fraternity houses,” he said. “Basically, fire codes require that if you’re going to do cooking in a kitchen like that, you need a fire extinguisher system.”The problem had been developing for a while. “That first year they were allowed to keep kitchens open one more year,” Hazen said. “They had to take the deep fat fryers out, but could keep [the kitchens] open for general cooking.”Existing fire codes are now being enforced more strictly. “The [rule requiring] kitchen fire suppression – that’s not new,” Hazen said. “[But] after the Alpha Tau Omega fire, people really tightened their codes,” he added, referring to a fire in a fraternity house at the University of Mississippi where three students died.”The [Fire Marshal’s office] are making us become more and more aggressive in enforcing the fire code,” Hazen continued. This is less of a problem for the houses that are managed by ResLife, because are technically not allowed to have kitchens. Those that do, like DU’s house, are not large or advanced enough to be affected by the regulations. “[They] don’t cross the threshold into commercial kitchen standards,” Hazen said.Other fraternity houses are making their own arrangements. Some have already made the necessary improvements or have plans to do so.But the kitchen of ICMC’s house has not been improved because its status changed at the end of the last academic year and might change again at the end of this year. “For ResLife and the College to look at that and say we’re going to put that money into a kitchen and only have it for a year, we can’t do that,” Hazen said. “ICMC could really use a kitchen like that, [but] we can’t in good faith spend student money to renovate the kitchen.” ResLife has already made many improvements to ICMC’s house. “All the carpet is new, all the rooms have area rugs that cover the entire floor.” Junior and ICMC member Greg Savich said. “There are new lights and new ceilings in rooms, and they replaced floor tiles in the bathrooms. There are new showers, new sinks in the bathrooms.””The washer/dryer was moved into the basement because it was against the fire code where it was,” Savich added. ResLife has made efforts to help the ICMC in the meantime. “We’re looking into getting them a microwave,” Hazen said. However, making the kitchen usable would have cost more than the other changes. “It would cost roughly 5,000 to 10,000 dollars, but I don’t have the numbers in front of me,” Hazen said. “To do it right, that’s the range we’re looking at.”ResLife would only pay for the improvements if student housing retained control of the house in the long term. “If Alpha Del doesn’t return for some reason and it’s going to be long term university housing, we’ll be looking into whether we want to spend the money,” Hazen said. Senior Alex Brody, a brother of ADF, is confident that they will return to the house. However, he says they have not yet looked into what action they will take about their kitchen. “No one knows, we haven’t decided yet,” he said. “Our first priority is getting the house back, then we’ll worry about whatever improvements need to be made.”Sigma Alpha Mu’s house has the same problem, but in their case it is less urgent because the house is not occupied. Because ACJC made their decision regarding SAM at the end of last semester, there was no time for other groups to bid for the house. Levesque can be reached at clevesque@campustimes.org.