The Burnt Popcorn Incident
The Incident
On October 10th, past 10 pm, McConnel Hall was under tornado watch and students were encouraged to remain inside. Around 10:15 pm, alarms began to go off. Most of the student body expected the alarm to be a tornado alarm, given the tornado warning, but, in fact, it was a fire alarm. This caused some confusion when evacuating. The student body was then ushered outside into Mac Park in cold, windy weather.
Resolution
After a few minutes of standing outside, it was determined that there was no serious danger and that there was nothing but some burnt food. The students were ushered back into McConnell and resumed their nightly routines, despite being a bit frazzled.
The following day, students were barred from entering Mac Cafe or SAC, likely due to investigations into what caused the alarms to trigger.
Cause
According to legend, the cause was Austin Liu microwaving popcorn for an extensive amount of time in SAC. Rumor has it that he microwaved it for several minutes (!), causing it to burn, and the resulting smoke set off the fire alarm.