A large number of students and prospective students were told while eating their meals yesterday to leave the Union immediately – a fire had broken out.

The fire alarm went off after an aluminum foil wrapped sandwich – placed in a microwave by a student employee – began to smoke, causing an evacuation of the Union on one of its busiest days of the year.

‘The evacuation was fairly orderly even though there was a lot of people there from out of town,’ Teri Sharp said, director of media relations at the University.

The Union was more crowded than usual because of the Admissions Preview Day that the University hosts every year on President’s day.

The University estimated that about 2,000 prospective students would come to the University for the campus tours yesterday ‘shy;- which made the fire alarm at the Union even more hectic than usual according to David Rice, assistant director of admissions.

Rice said that if the alarm would have sounded at nine in the morning then it would have been a huge inconvenience but since it was later in the day fewer potential students from the Admissions Preview Day were in the Union.

It was a better day for the alarm because on any other day it might have been ‘blizzarding’ Rice said.

‘Luckily it is 30 degrees out and sunny,’ Rice said. ‘It would be nice though if they would hurry up and get that dome built over campus though.’

A group of potential students stood outside in the cold during the alarm and joked how glad they were that the presentation they were in ended short.

‘It was a lame presentation so I was happy to get out of it,’ Brittany Banks, a high school student interested in attending the University, said.

The emergency call was made to Bowling Green Fire Department at 1:37 p.m. and by 1:45 p.m. the students were allowed back in the building – a short and minor setback for the Admission Preview Day agenda.

The incident caused no damage.