Last week, The Globe office had a gas leak. We share our space with WPPJ on the edge of campus in Conestoga Hall, a leased building that the university technically does not own. On Monday, Feb. 14, we reported the smell of gas to public safety, who told us that they would contact us as soon as the issue was fixed and who left it up to us whether or not we wanted to use the space in the meantime.

You don’t — and should never — mess around with the smell of natural gas in a building. And we certainly were not going to, even though Monday is the day of the week where we spend hours in the office putting together the newspaper for Wednesday’s issue. So we decided not to chance it and had everyone go home. We were later told by university officials to stay out of the office for the time being.

Luckily, due to the effects of the pandemic, our staff is entirely trained to put the newspaper together remotely, so we were able to adapt to this issue immediately. Everyone put in the work and was able to get the newspaper to print on time.

A few days later, on Wednesday, Feb. 16, we learned from one of our advisors, not public safety, that the issue had been resolved. We aren’t placing blame in public safety’s direction — we are just here to once again acknowledge that our school has infrastructure needs that need to be acknowledged, as well as communication problems (ironic, considering our school is well known and respected for its School of Communication.)

The bystander effect is a theory in social psychology that states that people will ignore an issue because they assume someone else will deal with it. If you smell gas, don’t be a bystander, call public safety.

That applies to anything on campus, and even in your lives beyond college, for any potentially dangerous scenario. Too often we dismiss seemingly insignificant signs of a threat until it is too late. The best thing for all of us to do in situations like this is to be proactive — evacuate, communicate and stay safe.