If you’re a senior or perhaps a super senior, you might remember the evening Farside caught on fire in February 2004. You might have been in the building when it happened and you might have even stayed at the Hilton in White Plains for two and half weeks before you were able to move back into your dorm.
“We never found out who set fire to one of the couches in the student lounge on the first floor,” said ’07 alum Valerie Weaver. “It was contained in the room but there was smoke damage throughout the building.”
Weaver, who lived in Farside at the time, was in class when it happened. “I’m glad that I wasn’t in the building,” she said. “I’m pretty sure I would have ignored the fire alarm. The alarms were going off pretty often at that point and it was getting annoying.”
Senior Anna Lobosco remembers the sense of urgency on campus that day. “I was in class and some guy was running in the hallway shouting, ‘There’s a fire in Farside! Get all your belongings!’” she said. “I didn’t really believe it but people in my class ran out to save their stuff.”
However, firefighters did not let students go back into Farside to get their belongings. “We had none of our personal possessions with us during this time,” Weaver said. “They sent people into the building to get medications after, but that’s pretty much it.” The Red Cross provided students with $45 vouchers for Sears to buy new socks and underwear, according to Weaver.
University Police could not be reached for comment about the incident.
According to an editorial published in The Journal News on Feb. 27, 2004, “260 students were displaced in the suspicious fire,” and there were “minor injuries.”
The dormitory, built in 1972, was “up to code” at the time, according to The Journal News, but was not required to have the latest technology in fire prevention and therefore sprinklers were not installed. The Journal News reported that “the chief of the New York State University Police told The Journal News that college officials were planning to ask the state for estimates on installing sprinklers in all dorms, but they did not know when or how much money they would get for the project.” The building did have fire and smoke detection alarm systems at the time.
Not all of the Farside residents were sent to the Hilton for the full two and a half weeks. “One of the streets in The New had just finished with renovations luckily,” said Weaver. “After a few days they moved a lot of us into there. Some students offered up their empty couches for other displaced students to stay.”
If there’s any advice the Farside fire survivors could give to current residents, Lobosco said it would be “to keep a close eye on your couches!”
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