On September 25, residents in Meisner Hall were evacuated from the premises due to the presence of a noxious odor.

Lucas Kleven, a freshman from Granite Falls, was present during the evacuation.

“It was 8 o’clock at night,” Kleven said, “and the alarms went off. I thought it was a drill so I wasn’t too worried about it.”

Also present during the evacuation was Raevonne Richardson, a Central freshman majoring in music. She said she was sitting in her room when the evacuation started.

“Me and my roommate were sitting in our room when we hear people coughing and running down the hallways,” Richardson said.

Richardson said that her first impression as that people were sick until she heard the fire alarms. She said that as soon as she opened the door, she was hit with an odor and started coughing.

Kleven said that as he was making his way down to the second and first floors he began to notice an odor in the air.

“You could smell it, and kind of taste it,” Kleven said. “It felt like there was something sharp kind of poking me in the nose.”

Richardson said that the effects of the gas didn’t last too long, saying that it hurt her throat.

Armando Ortiz, a transfer student from Lewis and Clark College, was also present during the evacuation. He said that when the evacuation occurred, he was playing basketball.

“I was playing basketball for two hours, and I came out and somebody told me that I had to go to the Wellington center,” Ortiz said. “I went, and they told us we had a gas leak.”

Richardson said that students were instructed by campus authorities to call any missing roommates and inform them of the situation. She said they were then taken next door, where there were informed medical care would be provided to students. She said that she and her roommate were relocated to a dorm on the north side of campus.

Kleven said that he spent the night at a friends apartment, and was allowed back into Meisner at eleven the next morning.

“They told us that they didn’t know what is was,” Richardson said, “but that it was from an independent source, and that somebody did it.”