COLUMBIA --- Nearly a year after her 18-year-old daughter died in a beach house fire, Kaaren Mann hopes to honor her by fighting for campus fire safety.

Lauren Mahon was among seven South Carolina college students who died in October during a weekend trip to Ocean Isle Beach, N.C.

On Tuesday, Ms. Mann and about 30 University of South Carolina students will join 30 students from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to launch National Fire Campus Safety Month at the U.S. Capitol.

"She was one of these people who found a cause and did something about it," Ms. Mann said. "She's not going to follow in our footsteps, her dad's and mine, so maybe we could honor her enough to follow in her footsteps."

Lauren Wilson, 21, of Charleston, said she volunteered to press the issue on a national stage because she didn't want other colleges to endure such a tragic loss. "It touched us all," she said. "We can prevent it, and it doesn't even take a lot."

Ms. Mann said she was elated that so many students were willing to make the four-day trip, missing classes so soon after the semester started.

"It helps to have a very worthy cause like this to focus on, especially now. She had one sibling, and he's away at school now," Ms. Mann said about her son, who recently left for college.

Last school year, at least 18 college students died in off-campus fires, according to Massachusetts-based Campus Firewatch, which organized the Capitol Hill launch of fire safety month.

The Carolina students; other mothers of fire victims; and Shawn Simons, who survived a Seton Hall University dorm fire in 2000, will call on Congress to pass the Fire Sprinkler Incentive Act, which would provide a tax incentive for retrofitting homes and commercial buildings with sprinkler systems. Advocates hope it encourages landlords to install sprinklers.

Though only a couple of states require colleges to retrofit older dorms with sprinkler systems, many colleges are doing it on their own, said John Viniello, the president of the National Fire Sprinkler Association.

But most students live off campus, and that's where more than 80 percent of campus-related fatal fires occur. Since 2000, at least 129 college students have died in fires, said Ed Comeau, the publisher of Campus Firewatch.

"People say it costs dollars, but it's an inexpensive thing when it comes to saving lives," Tripp Wylie said about sprinklers. The 21-year-old USC student survived the Ocean Isle fire by leaping from a third-story window. He is among those traveling to Washington.

"While it might bring back bad memories, it will help people out in the long run, so that will mean good memories," Mr. Wylie said.

The group will also thank Congress for passing the Campus Fire Safety Right-to-Know Act, which President Bush signed last month, seven years after its introduction, as part of a larger package on college access and cost. The law requires colleges to notify incoming students and their parents about the fire safety equipment on campus, including which dorms have sprinkler systems.

Bonnie Woodruff, whose son, Ben, died in a fire in his Chapel Hill fraternity house on Mother's Day 1996, considered the bill's passage a huge victory. She said she worried plenty about her son being away at college but never thought to ask about sprinklers.

"I wish as a parent I'd had this information," she said.