“Would it surprise you to find out that the place I feel least safe on campus is inside the library?” guest columnist Sarah Bush wrote in the September 24 Daily after learning of the July 22 incident. She then described her own experience last winter, when a man asked her to participate in a psychological study, led her to a secluded room nearby, and began asking her questions.
Bush said she snapped out of what she later understood was a hypnotized state after the man repeatedly asked her to lie down on the floor. When she tried to leave, the man blocked her way, but she pushed past him. Although she filed a police report and sent out a mass e-mail warning others, “clearly, it wasn‘t enough. . . . The library stacks are a criminal's dream,” she wrote.
While University Librarian David Bishop said no security changes have been made since the latest reported incident, campus police said they have stepped up patrols. “This building is just a real challenge because of the nooks and crannies and multiple towers,” Bishop said.
Posted October 6, 2003.