A student reported she was assaulted in her Warren Towers dormitory early Sunday, Boston University Police Department officials confirmed.
The woman reported she was awoken at 4:30 a.m. by a man touching her, said BUPD Sgt. Jack St. Hilaire. BUPD has not yet identified a suspect, nor could they confirm whether he was a student.
“She chased him out of the room, then [she] returned to the room,” said BU spokesman Colin Riley, adding that the suspect was touching the woman’s arm.
The suspect later reentered the room and touched the woman again in a similar manner, Riley said. At this point, the woman woke up her roommate and told her what happened.
The incident was reported to BUPD at 1 p.m. that day, crime logs show.
The suspect is still at large, Riley said.
The alleged assault comes more than a month after another student reported a 50-something man touched her buttocks in a College of Arts and Sciences elevator. As in that incident, students are now questioning why they did not receive an emergency alert about the situation.
“An alert would have been definitely helpful,” said Warren resident and Sargent College of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences freshman Katie Haberman. “Just so [students] can take precautions like locking the door.”
Federal law requires schools to notify students in a timely manner of crimes that threaten the community.
Riley said this incident posed no “immediate and ongoing threat” and so the school’s decision not to notify the BU community does not violate the Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act.
“The prudent thing to do is investigate the case [and] look at parties involved” before sending an alert, Riley said.
Warren residents said information about early Sunday morning spread among them only through rumors.
“I don’t see why they didn’t,” said a student regarding emergency notification, speaking on condition of anonymity because she said Residence Hall Director Nelson Feliciano had asked students not to speak to the media about the incident, though he did not confirm details of it.
But some students agreed with Riley and said they saw no reason to send an emergency alert to the community.
“If you tell people, they’re going to panic, even though Warren is a very safe place,” said Nick Russo, a CAS freshman. “It could do more harm than good.”
“I don’t know how useful it would be to send a message after it was over,” said Pablo Fuentes, a Warren resident. “They should acknowledge it, but in an email, as an example.”
Fuentes, a School of Management freshman, said it would have been appropriate to send a message telling students to take precautions but not to panic.
“It’s a very safe campus,” Riley said. But he urged students to “lock your doors [and] report any problem immediately to the police so they can respond and investigate.”
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