For residents of Willer Hall at Quincy University, the sound of a fire alarm has become an all-too-familiar part of campus life. Since the beginning of the school year, alarms have gone off so frequently that students have started keeping an informal tally and a running joke.

The deal is simple: if Willer Hall can make it 60 consecutive days without a single fire alarm, the residents will be rewarded with what they’re calling the “pizza alarm,” a hall-wide pizza party to celebrate. But months into the semester, that goal remains unmet.

“We haven’t even come close. Every time we start to make progress, another alarm goes off and resets the count back to zero,” Morgan Schrock, a Resident Assistant who lives in Willer Hall, said.

While most of the alarms turn out to be false, they still require every resident to evacuate the building or else you will get a fine for not leaving the building, no matter the time or weather. Some incidents have been particularly inconvenient.

“I think the fire alarms are pretty annoying, especially when they go off like without a cause. And then also just, yeah, at 2 a.m. in the middle of the night and it just disrupts my sleep, especially when I have a game the next day. I felt very tired. And I mean, it’s good to have fire alarms, but it’s also pretty annoying when it’s like just a false fire alarm all the time. And it happens a lot of times lately,” Marina Oberschmid said.

Many students including another Willer resident Jessie Newton say the interruptions are beginning to take a toll.

“It’s frustrating when it happens during the night, especially before a big exam, we understand that safety comes first, but the constant alarms are exhausting. It feels like we can never catch a break,” Newton said.

According to Schrock, the building’s staff and the university’s maintenance team have been working to identify the causes of the repeated alarms. In many cases, the triggers are false and they do not know a reason for them.

“At the end of the day we will not take the fire alarms seriously or believe it when it is actually a real fire alarm,” Newton said.

Many residents share that concern, worrying that the constant false alarms could lead to too much pride in a real emergency situation. The repeated disruptions have made some students numb to the sound altogether, creating potential safety risks in the future.

“Most of the alarms are just small accidents, but they affect the whole building, we remind residents to be careful when cooking and to keep bathroom doors open when showering to prevent steam buildup. We’re doing everything we can to reduce the number of false alarms,” Schrock said.

Still, despite efforts to prevent them, the alarms continue to ring, sometimes multiple times a week. What started as an inconvenience has now become part of Willer Hall’s culture.

For now, students are keeping their humor and patience, even if sleep is occasionally interrupted.

“We just try to stay positive, maybe one day we’ll actually make it to sixty days and when that happens, I promise there really will be a pizza alarm,” Schrock said.

Until then, Willer Hall residents continue to live with their hope for a pizza party.