At least a dozen exit signs have been vandalized around campus since the beginning of the school year, according to BU police crime statistics.
“We go through a series of these from time to time,” said Captain Donald A. Chier, a spokesman for Binghamton’s New York State University Police.
Police, who investigate the damage as criminal mischief, surmise that the damage occurs as a result of drunken highjinks.
While damaged exit signs cost time and money to be replaced, police and safety officials are less concerned with lost finances and more concerned that students are safe.
“The exit signs being gone places people in jeopardy,” Chier said.
The signs, which cost between $10 and $15 each, are required by state and university building codes to help people find the easiest ways to get out of a building during emergencies, such as fires and blackouts, said Connie E. Corey, BU’s associate director of Environmental Health and Safety.
Tuesday’s two blackouts across campus illustrate how exit signs are vital, Chier said. Without lights, the bright, fluorescent red and green exit signs can show people the easiest way out during emergencies.
And during a fire, when smoke fogs the area, the bright exit signs can mean the difference between life and death.
BU officials invoked safety concerns in early 2005 when BU police and dorm officials installed hidden cameras to find out who was vandalizing exit signs in Newing’s Broome Hall. At least one student was arrested based on information gathered by the cameras. Privacy concerns raised by some professors and students were dismissed by University officials who said at the time that exit-sign safety outweighed privacy.
Since the beginning of the semester, five exit signs have been vandalized in Bingham Hall, four in Broome, and one each in Seneca, Oneida and Chenango halls. At least 83 percent of the exit-sign vandalism occurred in Newing College.