---

BY MARTHA MARRAZZA

In print | Published September 7, 2006

Two unusual crimes occurred in Parrish on August 28, tainting move-in day for new students.

An intruder stole one student’s clothes out of the Parrish laundry room and also took a few other items from various students, according to the Public Safety report. After Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham ‘07 saw a stranger wearing his clothes, he alerted Public Safety at about 10:30 a.m. Public Safety officers apprehended the man at LPAC shortly after Goldsmith-Pinkham’s call.

“A student who was an RA noticed this individual in the hall. He had clothes that the student owned. He [the RA] had been doing laundry, so he went to the basement and saw his clothes were missing. He called us, and to make a long story short, we nabbed him,” said Owen Redgrave, director of Public Safety. “We held him and his person was searched, and he had a few items on his person, like an iPod that we later found out was another student’s.”

Goldsmith-Pinkham said he was immediately suspicious of the man when he saw him. “He came right up here; he was walking through the halls. I imagine he was looking for rooms to be open. He was wearing my pants and the jacket that goes with them, and my t-shirt as well,” he said. “I recognized it immediately. He tried to make conversation with me. I was stunned. He kept going, and then I called Public Safety.”

Public Safety officers located the intruder after they received a second call. “The initial search of Parrish didn’t produce this suspect, but at about 11:08 p.m. we received a call from somebody in LPAC. Apparently this individual was wandering around the stage area asking for money. When he was asked what he was doing, he said he was waiting for a friend in class and a light bulb went off because classes hadn’t started yet.”

After Public Safety officers arrested the man, who was unaffiliated with the college, Redgrave said he was turned over to the Swarthmore borough police.

Redgrave said that the crime struck him as bizarre. “It’s a little unusual. Apparently he changed his clothes in one of the housekeeping spaces in the basement,” he said.

Public Safety, along with the dean’s office, decided not to issue a Public Safety awareness bulletin since the crime was resolved.

Around 8:30 p.m. the same day, Public Safety officers received a call that a different male intruder had pulled back a shower curtain in the Parrish Third bathrooms while a female second-year student was taking a shower, Redgrave said. The man fled the scene before the student could identify the intruder, and Public Safety officers were unable to track him down.

“There weren’t any words exchanged. I think the person left right after they peeked in shower,” Redgrave said. “I think our involvement was all very much after the act, about 45 minutes after. She could tell the race of the person by the skin color, but I’m not sure that there’s been a positive identification of a person. We searched for a person but we didn’t find anybody that matched that description,” he said.

Cristina Alva ’07, the RA on Parrish third, responded to the incident.

“We called Public Safety, they took a statement from the victim, and that was how it went,” Alva said. “Unfortunately the victim wasn’t able to give a real description. I mean the thing is she didn’t exactly see who it was very well she was so frightened, and nobody else was on the hall to give a description, so it’s kind of one of those things that he probably won’t be apprehended and it could have been anyone.”

Dean of Student Life Myrt Westphal said she and Redgrave decided not to send out a Public Safety awareness bulletin following the shower incident for a number of reasons. “It wasn’t clear enough who that person was. The person in the shower just had a brief look, they didn’t have enough description to say what the person was like. It just felt like ‘who is this?’ Is it a student, is it an off-campus person?” Westphal said. “What precautions could you take? Not take a shower? It felt like sending out a bulletin wouldn’t necessarily help or prevent something like that from happening.”

Redgrave said that Public Safety looks to the Cleary Act and works with the dean’s office to decide which incidents are publicized to all students in the form of a bulletin.

“The shower incident […] got a lot of discussion between the deans’ office and us, and again we look at the seriousness of the incident and primarily, whether we are required to do a bulletin or not. The answer to that was no,” Redgrave said.

“But then we look at what could be gained by putting the bulletin out, and the lack of description entered into the decision. If there was a description of a person, and it’s got to be a relatively good description, then people could certainly use that information to take steps to safeguard themselves,” Redgrave said. “But as it is, people should always be cautious, and I suppose it’s the kind of incident that can happen in many places.”

Westphal said she was surprised that two events of this nature happened on one day. “I thought it was weird that they were both on move-in day, but it is a time of confusion on campus,” she said. “Doors are open, and people don’t know who’s a stranger and who is just new.”

Westphal traces reports of intruders in dorms back to the culture of openness and door-propping at Swarthmore. “It goes back to the propping of doors everywhere. Owen Redgrave told me that his officers report 10 doors propped a day as they do their rounds. It’s not just Parrish that people can get into – it’s all buildings. There is a culture of propping rather than closing doors, propping rather than taking your key. It would be great if we could break that culture for everybody’s safety.”

While the administration has denied previous calls for universal dorm access on account of expense, Westphal said the administration might reconsider their policy in the future.

“The issue of universal dorm access comes up perennially, but in order to put the system in and monitor it and repair it, it’s so expensive. Do we want to spend half a million a year to maintain it and a million to put it in, or would we rather spend money on something else?” she said. “If we were in Philly it would be a different priority. But if we have a whole bunch of incidents like this, the issue may come up again. The people at Public Safety are always pushing for more safety, students are always pushing for more freedom, so … we haven’t gotten there yet.”

---

« RETURN TO NEWS

« PREV ARTICLE | NEXT ARTICLE »