Reply to Totally crazy story: a "cult" at Sarah Lawrence College

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]How on earth did the school allow this man to live there?  When you rent a house, there’s usually a clause limiting the number of times someone not in the lease can stay over.  How does a college allow an adult to basically move in to a dorm?[/quote]

Sophomore year, a girl on my floor was dating a much older guy. At least late 30s.  Possibly early 40s. Not a hot professor type. He looked like a sad dad. He typically stayed over 1-2 nights a week. She discovered he was married (shocker) and booted him out one night around 2 am. We didn’t see him for 6 weeks. Then, he returned and actually moved into her dorm room. His wife had kicked him out. I remember that we all talked about them, but to my knowledge no one reported it to Res Life. He lived in our dorm for about 2.5 months. This was definitely not allowed, but I think we all just wanted to see how it panned out.[/quote]

That's crazy.  I was trying to think of how the SL thing could have worked out that way, so I ask -- was there an RA on the floor?  Usually there is.  Didn't that person notice?  Did the building have security and security guards to check in?  My dorm required a card to swipe in and there were usually security guards hanging around.  They recognized most people by face.  I think they would have questioned a 40-something man who kept coming in and out, as he would have stood out as not a student!  [/quote]

I posted earlier about touring SLC last fall. The college seems to have some dorms that are actually houses right on the edge of campus (as in, single-family homes that maybe SLC bought up as they went on the market--?). I wonder if the dorm Slonim (named in the article) is one of those; they seem like they could probably house only a relative small group of students and might not have room for any "resident faculty" living quarters, which tend to be larger living spaces. Also, not every college puts an RA into every small dorm. Don't know if there was anything like a RA living in Slonim at that time (these students were at SLC in the early 2010s mostly if I read the article right).

I can see how this situation might happen especially if all the students were under his sway, or not under his sway but a bit scared of him, or...worst of all, apathetic. Parents, let's teach our supposedly independent young adults to BE adult and REPORT crap that seems odd (or violates rules like, no non-students living in dorms) because they may be helping someone like these vulnerable students who got sucked in by this sicko. I'm sure many college students just tell themselves, this situation might seem weird but I don't want to judge, i don't want to interfere, I might be wrong, I want to tolerate all kinds of relationships, I don't want to get the student into trouble, etc. So they do as the PP above did -- nothing-- and don't report things.
[/quote]
But this was reported to the school, by at least one of the parents. The school did nothing in response.  [/quote]

That does not give students a pass on reporting it themselves if they thought something was wrong.

If students had reported the guy living full-time in the dorm, the school might have finally taken a little action at the time, adding up parent complaints plus student complaints.

It's possible of course that there were some reports from students to the administration or the security staff and the article does not mention those reports. If it turns out that there were student complaints -- it makes the college look even worse for doing nothing, if it's possible for the college to look worse.

Agree with others above that I'm surprised we haven't at least seen  reporting elsewhere, if only of the "New York magazine had a story that said this" type. Maybe other, bigger outlets are checking out the reporting for themselves and will cover this, or maybe they figure there's no further story to report and the magazine story had all that there is to say. But based on this thread I think MANY readers want to know what Sarah Lawrence has to say for itself. I know the events were some years ago but if I had a kid there now, I'd be very leery of anything the college said about its security or supervision of its physical facilities. [/quote]

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