Graduate housing to get sprinklers

Three years after a student died in an off-campus fire, fire sprinklers will be installed in Graduate Hills and Graduate Gardens after a university system committee approved the $7.5 million project.

The contract between Southern Management Corporation, which manages Graduate Hills and Gardens, and the university was approved by the finance committee of the Board of Regents, which oversees the University System of Maryland.

Graduate Hills and Gardens will be the last housing units under the responsibility of the university to receive fire sprinklers, according to John Farley, assistant vice president for administrative affairs. He said the plan was launched after senior David Ellis died in a fire on Knox Road in 2006.

Both apartment complexes are owned by the university, but they are leased and operated by the Southern Management Corporation, which is not obligated by law to install sprinklers because the apartments were grandfathered under an older College Park law that does not require buildings to install them.

However, since Ellis' death, the university has been working to improve fire safety, Farley said, leading to the agreement between Southern Management and the university about the sprinklers.

"Evidence shows that if you have fire sprinklers in housing units you won't have deaths [caused by fires]," he said. "Sprinkler systems always save lives."

The university plans to pay for $5 million of the project, while the Southern Management Corporation will pay the remaining $2.5 million, according to Paul Stackpole, a spokesman for the university system.

The university's contribution will come from funds originally meant for a graduate student center that never came to fruition, according to Laura Moore, former president of the Graduate Student Government.

Calls to Southern Management Corporation offices were unreturned.

The expensive nature of the project means it has to be approved by the Board of Regents, which examines all contracts of more than $5 million. The approval by the finance committee means the Board of Regents will likely vote on the issue at their next meeting.

Molly Clever, a resident of the apartment buildings and a graduate student in sociology, said she is surprised that the university is just installing them now. She said she is happy about the project, but does not understand why it was not done sooner.

"I was surprised that they don't have [sprinklers] already," she said. "I would have hoped they had them before."

According to Gabriel Gerni, a fellow graduate student of Clever's, the sprinklers are especially important for those who live in Graduate Hills and Gardens because many students live in the apartment units with their families.

"[The sprinklers] are good because graduate students aren't traditional students," Gerni said. "Oftentimes people have small children living [with them]."

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