In an incident Oct. 6 in the 10 West and Modern Theater residence hall, a non-university individual was able to enter the building without an ID at 2 a.m. The incident involved an altercation with the male suspect and ended in an arrest. Although the instance was in the early morning, students didn’t receive notification until about 12 hours afterward.
Students in the 10 West and Modern Theater residence halls said they felt left in the dark about the situation at hand. Bella Wawrzyniak and roommate Ella Weinmann had an SUPD officer knock on their door and ask questions about a potential investigation around 10 a.m. They had no information regarding the situation that had occurred early in the morning.
“They knocked on the door, asked us if we had heard anything suspicious that night, asked if we had heard anyone running around on the floor, if anyone was awake at that time, those kinds of questions,” said Wawrzyniak. “We asked if everything was okay. They said everything was fine and they were doing an investigation, and that was it.”
Residents received a message from SUPD about the incident at 2 p.m. Oct. 6.,
“Around 2:00 am this morning (October 6, 2024), an unauthorized male entered the 10 West Residence Hall. SUPD arrested the individual for Trespassing. If anyone had any contact with the individual, please notify SUPD at 617-573-8111,” the email said.
For Warwzyniak, Suffolk’s acknowledgment of the situation afterward wasn’t sufficient to answer the questions residents had, leaving them fearful about what may have happened.
“I just remember we were all really scared. We don’t normally lock our doors, we don’t really care. But we’ve started doing that because we didn’t know what has actually been going on,” said Warwzyniak.
On the evening of Oct. 6, Suffolk CARES reached out to residents with resources for counseling after the incident. This email was an indication for Weinmann that the situation may have been more serious than other information let on.
“After receiving that email, I realized that the situation may have been a bigger deal than what was communicated with us, which made me a little uneasy,” Weinmann said.
The university’s police department has the jurisdiction to decide how students are alerted of concerns on campus, as outlined by the Clery Report. The university uses RAVE, an application that allows for mass messaging, which allows the SUPD Chief or following members in the chain of command to dictate which students and faculty are alerted and when.
The arrest didn’t occur within the residence hall, it happened on Washington St., according to University Spokesman Greg Gatlin. With an active SUPD arrest on streets traveled by many Suffolk students, it was concerning for Wawrzyniak that there wasn’t a broader line of communication.
“I think it should’ve been known on campus that this was something that happened. Everybody gets the emails when someone gets stabbed outside of a building, everyone should know that this happened. It seems like they’re trying to keep it a secret,” Wawrzyniak said.
The individual was able to enter the building by walking around a large group of Suffolk students entering the residence hall and was then able to access an elevator, according to Gatlin.
Gatlin said the RAVE message was to residents of 10 West and Modern because their building was the one affected by the incident.
“Residents in those buildings were notified in a timely manner. There was no need for broader community notification because the unauthorized individual had been arrested, and there was no immediate danger to the community,” Gatlin said.
Wawrzyniak said the incident follows a pattern of what she sees as security and SUPD officers not fulfilling their duties.
“My biggest issue with this whole thing is there seems to be a lack of training or care. This exact same day at 12, going into the same building and tapping our IDs and whoever was the security guard didn’t even look at us, like didn’t even look to see if it was the right people,” said Wawrzyniak. “Especially on a day where we have an incident, they aren’t even caring.”
With little resolution in student’s eyes, there’s been a shift in the perspective of campus and the buildings that are supposed to be safe.
“I always thought of my dorm building as a safe space, so knowing that there was someone unauthorized running around right outside my door before getting arrested had made me feel less safe whilst in my dorm,” said Weinmann.
