You wake up in a cold sweat in your ECON 101 class. One moment, you’re dreaming of sugarplums and an enrollment shopping cart full of green circles; the next, a piercing fire alarm shocks you back to reality. It’s the third time you’ve been ripped from sweet, sweet, lecture-hall slumber this week alone. 

As the frequency of false fire alarms and evacuations steadily increases on UNC’s campus, disgruntled students have been searching for answers. What’s causing them? Is there one alarm-pulling delinquent? Is it Rameses?

Well, dear Onyen readers, I have something embarrassing to admit:

It’s my fault. 

It’s all my fault. 

I knew what I was doing. I knew what chaos it would cause when I added “Bang!” by AJR to the playlist; I heard the fan on my laptop whir as I burned those bombastic tunes onto the CD; I felt the hard plastic case scorch my hand with radness; and still, I did it. I created a 33-minute, smoke-emitting, global-warming mixtape that could rival the sun’s surface temperature. 

A recent Qualtrics study found streams of my “Fire Toonz” mixtape positively correlated with the incidence of fire alarms on campus. The intros to “Iris” by Goo Goo Dolls and “Cake By The Ocean” by DNCE were reportedly overheard at Morrison Residence Hall right before the sounding of the fire alarm. Snippets of the Clef Hangers’ rendition of “Stick Season” by Noah Kahan crackled through the speakers of Chase Dining Hall during a recent fire drill. The most chilling part? All of these tunes have a spot in my cursed jam mix. 

These occurrences are too frequent to be coincidental, and I want to use this article to express my remorse. I had no idea this campus lacked so much sickness that a simple mixtape would cause disaster; however, I’m ready to learn from my mistakes and hope we can all move on. To those I’ve hurt, I’m sorry– and to those who can’t help but listen, maybe try streaming outside next time.