University block fines

ultimatedingbat

melancholly wrote: »

erm.... even if it was a mistake on your part, if you set the alarm off by your own mistake, you should really have paid up. it's not on to leave that cost to be absorbed by everyone else's rents in that situation. as much as the OP shouldn't pay for their mistake, you shouldn't be proud of making other people pay for your's!

Sorry my post was confusing there. When I accidently set off the alarm burning my cookies, I was never asked to pay any fine.

We were however asked to pay after someone else (not in our flat) deliberatly set off the alarms on a seperate occasion. It is this occasion that i refused to pay as it has nothing to do with me.

I was not saying be proud of making people proud of someone else fixing there mistake.

dumpy

It's actually a criminal offense to set off a fire alarm maliciously and as this sounds like a break glass was broken this is a malicious activation.

The blanket fine is because they don't know who is responsible, so everyone suffers from the actions of one person.

Worth remembering that you can't graduate if you have an outstanding debt to a University.

michael137

dumpy wrote: »

It's actually a criminal offense to set off a fire alarm maliciously and as this sounds like a break glass was broken this is a malicious activation.

The blanket fine is because they don't know who is responsible, so everyone suffers from the actions of one person.

Worth remembering that you can't graduate if you have an outstanding debt to a University.

That's a very strange definition of justice - since they don't know who did it we are all guilty until proven innocent (or indeed even if proven innocent, we are punished).

MissPop

michael137 wrote: »

That's a very strange definition of justice - since they don't know who did it we are all guilty until proven innocent (or indeed even if proven innocent, we are punished).

I think it's just an added deterrent, in case people think it's not serious to be stupid and set off fire alarms - knowing that everyone will suffer for one person's actions. It's not fair, but presumably unis have reason enough to enforce these kinds of rules.

ultimatedingbat

All you could do is go and appeal to ur uni. Claim poverty

MarzipanFish

Im not sure if universities can still do it this way with the deposit protection schemes in place, but when i was in halls the fines were taken out of the deposits so you just got less back at the end of the year rather than the uni asking everyone for money.

I don't know why some students get the urge to behave like complete !!!!!! when they move away to uni. Some here started a fight with another flat that involved ketchup, raw chicken and mayonaise being thrown all over each others carpets & windows. Really posh newly built accommodation too. I was lucky i lived with reasonably sensible people. Someone did nearly cause an actual fire during a false alarm though cause they forgot to turn the grill off before going outside.

dumpy

michael137 wrote: »

That's a very strange definition of justice - since they don't know who did it we are all guilty until proven innocent (or indeed even if proven innocent, we are punished).

Presumably someone in your block who had access to the call point? Or a guest invited into the block by some one who lives there? Or someone gained access because the door had been left open by a non responsible person living there?

So someone in the block is responsible. If you know who it is, tell the people in charge of your hall.

You live there so collectively and communally you have a responsibility to ensure that fire alarms are not set off maliciously.

whitfreak

Durham (or atleast my college) had a similar system. Fines, damage charges, cleaning up vomit etc etc, were charged to the livers in as a whole. Unless of course the guilty party had owned up or been caught. The that bit of the charge was thier problem.

Someone made a point about the deposit protection thing... well most students in Halls don't pay a deposit. And this is because most halls are not rented out within the normal leasehold, tenant type laws. The contracts are specificly written to avoid that type of thing.

But if your original contract did not make it clear that you could be charged for other peoples damage/fault, then you do have an arguement for avoiding it. But if it was clear, then your stuffed. And you might as well pay up, as universitys have been known to hold back degrees for £2 library fines let alone a £50 "damages" charge.

MrTomato

they can probably kick you out if you don't pay. You most likely signed an agreement which will cover these things.

PasturesNew

I've always understood that in law you can't try somebody, knowing they aren't guilty.

So, take the case of a set of twins, you know ONE of them did it, but not which one ... so you can't charge and try them both just because one of them did it - because you also know one didn't. So you'd be knowing charging/trying an innocent person (even though you don't know which one it is).

Obviously, I have an advanced grasp of law, which can be observed in my advanced legal terminology here