This semester, there have been 12 on-campus fires, according to Investigator Tom Dunn.

The Offices of Public Safety and Residential Life are working together to take new measures to prevent any more from happening.

According to Dunn, of the 12 fires this year, eight of them were caused by the burning of recycle bins and trash in dumpsters. He said Public Safety typically sees about two fires a semester. He said Public Safety suspects this semester’s fires may have been arson.

The most recent fire occurred Nov. 9 outside Emerson Hall. All of the other fires occurred in the Lower Quads’ dumpsters.

Public Safety met with Residential Life last week to decide to move the dumpsters away from the dorms.

Dunn said Public Safety suspects that cigarettes have been thrown in the dumpsters — accidentally or intentionally — resulting in the fires.

“We have suspicions that it’s possibly an arson, but we haven’t concluded that,” he said.

Students have started a Facebook group called “Ithaca College Action Against Arson” to discuss concerns on how the fires were started.

Dunn said Public Safety is aware of the group but would not comment on the group. He said people have a First Amendment right to express their opinions and does not want to encourage or discourage that. Dunn declined to comment if Public Safety is looking at the Facebook group for possible clues.

“Public Safety takes this very seriously, and we’re investigating it to the best of our abilities to try to determine who is responsible, but we don’t have a professional comment on that,” he said.

Dunn said Public Safety could not comment further because it is an open investigation and they do not want to give any information that may help the person who may be starting these fires.

“I don’t want to get into the details of why we made that determination because  I don’t want to give an advantage to the person who is responsible or might be responsible for those instances,” Dunn said.

Tim Ryan, manager of Environmental Health and Safety, said Public Safety will meet again with Residential Life soon to finalize the plans for designated smoking areas on campus away from dumpsters, something Public Safety hopes will prevent more fires from happening.

Zach Newswanger, assistant director of operations for Residential Life, said New York state law says a person must be 25 feet from a building to smoke, but Ithaca College does not have its own policy. He said smoking areas will not only be designated as precautionary measures against fires, but also because Residential Life has received complaints about secondhand smoke since the beginning of the semester.

Newswanger said having designated smoking areas gives people the ability to be more courteous because they can ask a smoker to move away from the building and go to a certain place, whereas before they had nowhere specific to tell smokers to go.

“It gives you one more step because otherwise you’re just telling someone not to do it there, and you don’t necessarily have a response to ‘Well, where can I go?’” Newswanger said.

The Office of Environmental Health and Safety also made posters for Residential Life providing information on preventing and extinguishing fires and health and safety policies.

Ryan said there will be central dumpster locations farther away from the dorms that will have fences around them to keep trash from blowing away, but they may not be secured. He said garbage collection times will also change. The Lower Quads will be the last collection spot for the day as a preventative measure.    

“It will be their last pickup of the day as opposed to leaving the receptacles full of contents overnight, so they’re fairly empty through the night,” Ryan said.

Dunn said Public Safety is working with Residential Life to come up with an educational approach to raise awareness about fire safety and when to call Public Safety.

“[We are] working through Residential Life to warn people, if you see your friend outside smoking, you could report that to Public Safety because they might be either a witness or unknowingly observing someone doing something suspicious,” he said.

Sophomore Allison Kwasnik, a smoker, said she does not believe moving the dumpsters will make a big difference in preventing fires because most people throw cigarette butts on the ground. She said if there were more areas to dispose of them, this would not be a big issue.

“If the fires are being started by cigarettes — by people putting them out in the dumpsters — then they should look into getting more areas to actually dispose of the cigarettes so people don’t feel like they have to just throw them in the garbage or on the ground,” she said.