Yenni Jimenez Acosta, Contributing Writer
VCU residence halls were evacuated 91 times during the 2024-2025 academic year, mostly due to incidents of vaping and smoking.
Students are instructed to immediately evacuate dorms in the event of a fire alarm, and are often ushered to wait across the street in parking lots or in Monroe Park until first responders clear the building. Wait times can range from 10-30 minutes.
Some students living in residence halls have complained about frequent fire alarms disrupting their sleep, classes or work obligations.
The fire alarm in Cary and Belvidere went off 45 times last year, more frequently than any other residence hall, according to data provided by VCU Residential Life and Housing.
The alarm at Gladding Residence Center went off 22 times. It went off at Ackell Residence Center eight times.
The Honors College alarm went off five times. The alarm at Brandt Hall went off four times.
The alarms at Brandt Hall, Broad & Belvidere and West Grace North went off four, three and two times respectively.
Alarms at West Grace South and Grace & Broad 2 both went off one time. No fire alarms went off at Rhoads Hall and Grace & Broad 1.
The most frequent causes for fire alarms going off are vaping and smoking, with a few instances of people pulling alarms or cooking setting them off, VCU stated.
In the Fall 2025 semester, only upperclassmen dorms have been evacuated so far. The upperclassman dorms are Ackell, Broad & Belvidere, Cary & Belvidere, Grace & Broad, West Grace North and West Grace South.
Cary & Belvidere tops the list again with 15 alarms, followed by Ackell with four alarms, West Grace South had two and one at Broad & Belvidere.
Harper Ballance, a second-year communication arts student, circulated a collaborative tally of how many times the fire alarm went off at GRC last year, and when they went off.
Ballance counted 14 alarms during quiet hours and found the average time the alarm went off was 3:05 a.m..
“A large amount of them went off in the middle of the night, waking me up,” Ballance stated. “I was often left tired in the mornings, which affected how well I could perform in my classes that day. The alarms are very sensitive and it makes sense why, but it was still very annoying to see how small some of these incidents actually were.”
Susanna Menendez, a second-year psychology and health services student who lived in the Honors College, stated the fire alarm went off frequently, often because of construction being done on the elevators.
“It was very inconvenient for the majority of us since we live on floors three through seven,” Menendez stated. “Sometimes I went to work without certain materials or not dressed professionally due to not being able to enter my building.”