A malfunction in the Science Center fire alarm system interrupted a final yesterday in one of Harvard's largest classes, forcing students to wait outside for at least 20 minutes before resuming the exam.

The alarm rang almost two hours into yesterday morning's three-hour final for Social Analysis 78, Globalization and Its Critics, a popular class taught by University President Lawrence H. Summers and Bass Professor of Government Michael J. Sandel. Students were ushered outside--unsupervised--before being let back in to complete the exam.

As we were taking the exam, all of a sudden we started hearing the fire alarm go off, and basically we were just like, "What the hell is going on?" said Jonathan D. Cho '07, one of 356 students registered in the class.

Then some recorded message came on telling us that it wasn't a drill.

Cho said that even after they returned to their examination rooms in the Science Center, the alarm lights continued to flash.

"When we came back, for probably 15 minutes there were these blinking flashing lights and clicking sounds. It was kind of ridiculous," he said.

Exam proctors gave the students an extra 10 minutes to complete the exam to make up for the disruption. Some students said that they were surprised that there had been so little supervision in the time that they were outside.

"I would imagine that the exam would be compromised because you had all of your belongings and there was no attempt to control the crowd from talking on their cell phones or to one another," said Rebecca B. Fleming '07.

You basically just had a couple hundred people hanging out in front of the Science Center.

According to Harvard University Police Department Spokesman Steven G. Catalano, the alarm wasn't intentionally pulled, but rather was a result of a malfunction to the system.