UCSC students say school failing to keep them safe from voyeur targeting dorm showers

Two first-year UC Santa Cruz students say the university has failed to keep them safe after multiple incidents of someone seen filming students while they showered or stealing their clothes from a campus dormitory bathroom. 

The latest victim told Lookout she fled her shower screaming when she spotted the phone camera pointed at her from above the stall on May 31. The incidents have terrorized residents of John R. Lewis College’s freshman dorm and added to a series of other reports of voyeurism and sexual assault on campus this year. Previous incidents included stolen clothing and recording attempts, four of which targeted the fourth floor of the same building.

Lookout spoke to two of the four students who reported either stolen clothing or being recorded while showering. They both requested anonymity for this story, citing concerns for their safety. Lookout will use pseudonyms for both the students. 

They reached out to Lookout in frustration that the individual or individuals have continued to harass students, and said they feel the university hasn’t done enough to stop the crimes from occurring. 

“This man is still walking free, has videos of multiple women naked and has stolen women’s clothes,” said the student who spotted someone recording her in the shower on May 31, adding she’s not certain it’s the same individual in all cases. “I’m the fourth victim and that’s absolutely insane.” 

The student, whom Lookout is calling Emma, said she went to the bathroom to shower at about 4:40 p.m. When she walked in, she saw a tall Asian man she didn’t recognize. 

“I was slightly suspicious of him, so I took note of him. I watched him walk into the bathroom to see what he was going to do, and I watched him walk into one of the bathroom stalls,” she said. “And I saw one of my friends there. So I also felt a little more safe, because he’s one of my guy friends so I just felt more comfortable.” 

While showering, she thought she saw something above the stall door. She looked under the door, but didn’t see signs of anyone being in the area, so she went back to showering. About a minute later, she looked up and saw an iPhone pointing at her. The phone was gold with three cameras, and appeared to be an iPhone Pro.

“I didn’t see an arm. I didn’t see a face. The second I saw the camera, I started screaming,” she said. “I ran out of there. My towel was barely covering myself. I was trying to chase and I was screaming so that everybody would hear, ‘He was recording me! That man was just recording me while I was naked!'” 

A friend who was in the bathroom at the time ran out with her and used his phone to call the police. They suspect the voyeur went down the hall to a door leading to a stairway that goes down four flights to an exit of the building. 

A second student, whom Lookout is calling Alex, reported a similar encounter on Jan. 23. Alex, who uses she/her or they/them pronouns, said she was showering between 4 and 5 p.m. in a disabled stall, which has only curtains, no doors. She left her underwear, shirt and pajama pants in a dressing area attached to the private shower stall. While she was showering she heard a wrestling noise, like moving curtains.

“When I finished showering, I opened the curtain, I was like, ‘Where the f–k are my clothes?’” she said. 

Two other students on the same floor reported similar incidents on Feb. 11 and Mar. 4. According to Emma and Alex, the student who reported the February incident said someone reached over a stall door to grab her clothes, AirPods, glasses, key card, key to her room and her phone. They said the student’s phone was later found in a storm drain outside the building but with the phone’s cover removed. 

On March 4 at 8:35 p.m., another student reported that while showering she looked up toward the top of the shower stall to see a man smirking at his phone as he recorded her. 

Emma and Alex said in both those cases a tall Asian man was seen near the bathroom and outside by the storm drain and that he didn’t appear to be a resident of their building. The man’s description led Emma to be suspicious of the person she saw in the bathroom just before her incident. 

“My suspicion is, I don’t really think he lives in this building or in the building across from us,” Emma said. “Only because this has happened so many times, and people in the dorms, at least in the halls on every floor, we are very close-knit and know of each other at the very least.”

When Alex found out that Emma had reported an incident on May 31, she was shocked. 

“I was appalled and just so horrified,” she said. “I thought, there’s no way. I thought he was done. I thought he was done with his streak. I thought this man had had enough.” 

Campus police have also reported incidents of voyeurism, or a “peeping tom,” in Building 2 of Stevenson College and another outside of a bathroom of John R. Lewis College Building 2 – between Feb. 22 and March 4. The students in those cases also reported seeing a phone potentially being used to record them as they showered. 

In a news release on March 5 about three of the incidents between January and March, UCSC police said that Alex’s incident and the Feb. 11 report  – which both involved students saying their clothes had been stolen while they showered – “may be related to the voyeurism and video incidents.”

Campus police have not yet announced any arrests, and officials say they don’t believe Emma’s incident is connected to the other cases. UCSC spokesperson Scott Hernandez-Jason wrote in an email that at the moment, the university doesn’t “have any evidence that would lead us to believe Saturday’s [May 31] incident is connected to the incidents reported earlier this academic year.”

He didn’t answer questions about why investigators don’t believe the incidents are connected, or whether police have a suspect in the cases. UCSC police said Chief Kevin Domby was out of the office and not available until Monday. 

UCSC police also reported several incidents of sexual battery near the John R. Lewis College dormitories this spring and released a sketch of a light-skinned male in his early 20s with shoulder-length dark hair, wearing a black bandana, black-rimmed glasses and dark clothing. However, Alex and Emma said they don’t believe it’s the same individual involved in the cases on the fourth floor of their building, as multiple students reported seeing a tall Asian man in or near the bathroom. 

All four students live on the fourth floor of the building. While they’re not sure why their floor is being targeted, Emma and Alex suspect it could be, in part, because their building and its bathrooms have less security and are easier for a non-student to access.

Unlike some other campus dorms, such as Kresge College, John R. Lewis College doesn’t require an ID or key to access its bathrooms. In other dorms, such as Kresge, students have to scan their student ID to get into the bathroom.

The John R. Lewis College building’s toilet and shower stalls also have large gaps between the floor and the ceiling that could allow a tall person to reach over and grab someone’s items off a hook or to use a phone to record someone showering. The stalls for the disabled showers don’t have any doors, just two curtains with no way of locking or securing them. In comparison, all the toilets and showers at Kresge College have floor-to-ceiling doors with latches.

After the third report of someone stealing clothes or recording students in the bathroom, Emma and Alex said they learned that their resident assistant, a housing coordinator and other university staff had requested that university officials make safety improvements to the building. 

Those included requests for cameras to be installed outside of the building, additional security elements added to bathroom doors and barriers added on the shower stalls to prevent someone reaching over them from the outside. 

However, the students said they were told by a resident assistant and a Title IX staff member that university officials had turned down the adjustments to the bathroom shower stalls and the security cameras because of a lack of funding, a concern about privacy regarding the cameras, and because the university hadn’t received enough complaints. 

The university’s Title IX office focuses on preventing sex discrimination on campus and supports students and staff in resolving complaints. 

“They were supposed to install protective barriers on top and below the stalls,” said Alex. “However, that has still not been installed because, and I quote, ‘It would be too much of a hassle for maintenance people.’”

The one addition to the bathrooms Emma and Alex are aware of was magnets on the curtains to better fasten them and close them. But they said those began to break off the curtains within a week. 

Hernandez-Jason said the university is working to address the students’ safety concerns but didn’t provide details as to how, and did not respond to questions about whether school officials plan to install security cameras or why no extra security had been implemented for the building.

“We recognize the serious nature of these concerns and are committed to taking proactive steps to support our students while also addressing the structural challenges posed by some of our older facilities with community restrooms,” he wrote. “We have been in communication with our Title IX Office and are working to implement timely, thoughtful, and student-centered actions.”

He added that the issue isn’t “unique” to the campus, “will not be resolved overnight” and school officials are “prioritizing both immediate interventions and long-term strategies (including facilities upgrades) to enhance safety and security in our residential communities.”

Both Alex and Emma plan to move out as soon as they can – Emma was set to move into a new apartment in Santa Cruz on Sunday and Alex is moving home for the summer next Tuesday. They’re in disbelief that this has happened to four students and say they feel the university doesn’t care. 

Emma said it’s been “traumatic.” She said she’s been significantly impacted on an emotional level by her encounter with the voyeur and has barely been able to focus during class. She’s preoccupied with thoughts about the person who did this and how she can help police find them before it happens again. 

“Once your trust is broken in an area like a bathroom, it’s very hard to really get that trust back, and it’s really hard to kind of go back to the way you used to think,” she said. “When I’m showering, I have to have my roommate with me, I’m still looking up at the top, still paranoid and just feeling like I have to be on watch.”

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