Quinby House’s luau-themed campus-wide party was prematurely shut down last Friday when the Brunswick Police Department (BPD) showed up to investigate a 911 call made from the residence.
At around 11:45 p.m., an unknown student made the call from a phone in the Quinby common room. Officers from the Office of Safety and Security informed house residents, who then began to shut the event down. By around midnight the house was cleared out and the event was over.
“The house was very responsive,” said Quinby House President Reed Fernandez ’17. “I was impressed with them.”
As police pulled up in front of Quinby, Fernandez and Vice President Anisa LaRochelle ’17 greeted the officers and apologized for what had happened. At the same time, Security swept through the house to make sure everyone was out and that everything was in order before BPD entered.
The police assumed the call was accidental, but were obligated to search the house. After the officers found nothing wrong, they thanked house members for their cooperation and left.
“The whole night was blown out of proportion because of their presence,” said Fernandez.
At the time, it was unclear why BPD had arrived, and some students expressed concern about what was happening.
Cole Burkhardt ’18 was at the event when BPD arrived. He was informed by a Quinby resident that the police were coming and was told that he needed to leave as quickly as possible.
“He started saying, ‘Everyone needs to go right now. We need to get everyone out of the house,’” said Burkhardt. “As I was leaving I saw the two cop cars.”
The incident is not being investigated further.
“If we receive some information, we will act on it,” said Director of Safety and Security Randy Nichols.
Fernandez said that he thought the call was probably not intentional because the phone used to make it was an “old land line that looks like a toy.” The caller likely did not think it was operational, according to Fernandez.
“Each year we have several 911 hang-up calls that come from the campus,” said Nichols.
The incident at Quinby was not the only emergency response this weekend—there were also two alcohol-related transports, one on Friday and one on Saturday. Both transports were due to the use of hard alcohol.
These were not the first transports of the year. On September 21, a male student living in Helmreich House was transported to Mid Coast Hospital.
The number of transports is one higher than it was at this point last year. However, two years ago there were seven transports by this time, four of which were related to Epicuria.