By Meg Schmitt 

schmittm@grinnell.edu

An unidentified male was found wandering through the women’s locker rooms in the Bear Center Friday, saying he was looking for his friend and eluding the student worker who went to find him.
Emily Boydston ’13 was attending the desk in the equipment room at the time when several student athletes came to report the unwelcome visitor.

“I had a student athlete come out of the locker room to tell me that there was a male in the women’s varsity locker room. So I grabbed my student co-worker and we went to the locker room,” Boydston said.

She entered the locker room to find out what she could and inform Security of it.

“When I had someone come talk to me in the cage, my first priority was to get an ID on the person, maybe be able to stop him, get him out of the locker room,” Boydston said.

She pursued the suspected trail of the man, winding through the five different locker rooms within the women’s complex. Each successive group of student athletes echoed similar confusion about the whereabouts of the unknown male. “No one could tell me how he got in, just the fact that he was in the locker room,” Boydston said.

The intruder made his way through the back of the locker rooms, towards the shower area, when a student athlete asked what he was doing there. Upon responding about his ‘friend’, he was firmly told to leave the women’s locker room. Boydston, meanwhile, was narrowing in on reaching the intruder.

“I was right behind him at that point. He was really fast, because he had made it all the way down the hallway. By the time I had walked out of the locker room, he was around the corner,” Boydston said. Security picked up the ensuing investigation, in the hopes of identifying the person.

In a campus-wide email, Director of Security Stephen Briscoe described the man as high school or first-year college age, athletic build, 5’8”, around 170 pounds, with short, thick blondish hair that sticks up. He was wearing blue jeans and a grey hooded sweatshirt with orange writing on it with the number 32 on the back of it. Security asks anyone with information to call x4600.

Security interviewed any student athletes who had seen or interacted with the man to get the best physical description possible.

Boydston shared what she could discern of the intruder, including insight on his accessing the locker rooms in the first place. “I think he was familiar with the layout of the building because he knew how to get out of the building, and not just the main ways that people take, but the back ways as well,” Boydston said.

Security is now in the investigation stage of the procedure, gathering testimonies from any involved persons and reviewing the security procedures already in place. “[The ID] checker system is one of the extra security things that is in place,” Briscoe said. “It’s helpful when you’re doing these types of investigations.”

The intrusion has sparked discussion of security measures already in place, and the possibility for future reduction of intruders through additional measures such as installation of security cameras.

“We’ve elected to go with [the ID checker] method and it seems to work right now. Will we change it in the future? I don’t think so,” Briscoe said. But he added, “Cameras anywhere are an enhancement in security.”

The installation of security cameras is widely regarded as unnecessary, given the rarity of such cases and the probable cause. “There are now signs up for each of the individual locker rooms, and on all of the doors that say ‘Do not prop the doors open,’” Boydston said, referring to the back door of the women’s locker room, the most likely entry point for last week’s unknown visitor.