Scott BresslerIn response to the recent sexual assault and robbery of a Washington University female student on the South 40, the Office of Residential Life announced plans to install peepholes in residence hall doors.
The crime, which occurred Monday afternoon in Myers Hall, resulted when the alleged attacker, who was described by police as a black male between 20-30 years old, knocked on a female resident’s door and forced his way in after she opened the door.
Don Strom, chief of the Washington University Police Department (WUPD), said there is no new information to report regarding the investigation of the crime. Security officers will continue to be stationed outside of Myers Hall, and WUPD is continuing to follow leads in the investigation.
According to Tim Lempfert, associate director of Residential Life, the department plans to install peepholes in all ResLife residence hall rooms that do not have them yet. Residences that currently have peepholes installed include Liggett House on the South 40 and the Greenway, Rosedale, Millbrook and University Drive apartments.
The only room doors that will have a peephole installed are the ones that open to the hallways. For non-suite dorms, this means that the door to the room itself will receive a peephole.
For suite-style dorms, however, only the suite doors, and not the individual room doors, will receive peepholes. Students had mixed feelings about not having peepholes on individual room doors.
“I think that makes sense. When we’re alone in the suite we’ll be in the common room and we always leave the doors to our individual rooms open. We only have our individual doors closed when we’re sleeping or when we’re doing work,” said Laura Blum, a sophomore who lives in a suite-style dorm.
Others felt that peepholes should be installed on both the suite door and the individual room doors. “I think that they should probably do both just to be precautionary. However, we used to always leave our suite door open to be social, but we can’t anymore,” said Amy Power, a sophomore who also lives in a suite-style dorm.
“We always encourage our students to keep their room and suite doors locked,” said Lempfert.
He emphasized that despite the added security measure, students should not let down their guard. He explained that the peepholes are an added precaution and are not meant to replace other safety measures.
Lempfert said that work to install the peepholes would begin today. A schedule will be released to detail which residence halls will have peepholes installed each day. Although he did not provide an official timeline for completion, he did emphasize that the project will be finished as quickly as possible. “The facility staff is taking an aggressive timeline, so that this gets done very quickly,” he said.
In addition to the installation of peepholes, Residential Life asked residential advisors to meet with their floors. “We have asked all of our RA’s to schedule mandatory floor meetings in their communities within the next day or two to review safety and security policies and precautions with the community,” said Lempfert.
Several of Washington University’s peer institutions, including Northwestern University, lack peepholes on dorm rooms. Although Northwestern has not experienced a similar incident on its campus, Assistant Chief of the Northwestern Police Department, Daniel McAlare, reported that the campus is planning several preventative measures. One safety measure under consideration is having community service officers to monitor who enters and exits buildings, a measure which continues to remain in place in Myers Hall and other dorms on the South 40.
Northwestern has also been installing video cameras at primary building entrances and having doors to residence halls and campus buildings locked 24 hours a day.
Despite the additions, McAlare said that much responsibility still rests on the students. “Security is a shared responsibility, regardless of the setting of your campus. The University Police Department needs the help of students to maintain the safety of campus.”
-Additional reporting by Sam Guzik