By Kevin Mittal ’15, Staff Writer 

On Friday, October 11, 2011, the Livingston fire marshal arrived at school to approve the permits requested for Homecoming the following day. At this time, the various corridors had not been cleaned up of the extravagant decorations that the students had put up.

Upon seeing the amount of paper, hay, and other flammable materials placed in the senior and junior corridors especially, the fire marshal then called in other fire marshals to assess the situation. Because decorations covered more than 10% of the wall space, the fire marshals found NA in violation of the Fire Code. As a result, the Fire Department could have fined the school $15,000 for the safety hazard. However, through the combined effort of good luck and hard work, the school was saved the large fine.

After the debut performance of Nate Feinberg ’13 as Linda, the good witch in the Wizard of Oz, he ran off the stage in his pink tutu. This luckily diverted the fire marshal’s attention from the fire code issues and focused his attention on “the boy in the tutu.” This, and the combined effort of Shane Neibart ’12, Ben (Baiken) Aiken ’12 and Nicole Andrewjeski ‘13’s attempts to clear up the mess made a large difference. “We just told him that we realized the rules were important, and it won’t happen again,” junior class president, Nicole Andrewjewski ’13 stated. Through the combined efforts of these students, the fire marshal decided against the fine.

However, that is not the only repercussion NA experienced, the fire marshals also saw quite a few backpacks lying around school, especially in the L. The backpacks are a fire hazard because if there is a large amount of smoke, students can trip over them. They are also safety hazard from a policeman’s view because if students are going into a lockdown, the backpacks can still trip them, and their contents (let alone owners) are unknown. It is now more important than ever, that students follow the rules and use their lockers.

The administration has stepped up hallway patrols for errant items, confiscating them to the Dean of Students office. The first offense results in a warning and further offenses result in a detention. Many students have received detentions because of these new rules, but the school was saved a large fine. All in all, we have increased our safety and were saved a large fine. However, we cannot decorate for Spirit ever again, or leave backpacks in the corridors, Great Hall, or even in the L.