A student was recently harassed from outside of her apartment on campus.
Anna Pylman, senior, said a man knocked on her door on Sept. 16 and attempted to enter her dorm in the Cokesbury Court Apartments.
“Someone started knocking on my door, trying to open it pretty forcefully, so I walked over and I looked through the peephole, and it was someone I didn’t know, so I was like, ‘why are you here?’ and he told me that he was my Uber driver, and then I told him that I didn’t call an Uber, and then he told me that my boyfriend called him for me,” Pylman said. “I don’t have a boyfriend, and I was really freaked out because it was someone I didn’t know, and so I told him forcefully to go away, because I didn’t have a boyfriend, and then he left. But yeah, I was nervous he was going to try to break the door down or something like that.”
Pylman said she was unsure why it happened to her specifically.
“I have pepper spray and an alarm, but that’s it,” she said. “But the police were very quick to respond. I think they took about five minutes to get there, and I called them right away, so they were really quick, and they said they’d put a report in.”
Pylman said she spoke to Elizabeth Richardson, associate director of student housing and apartments, who said no other students had experienced something like this all year.
Pylman said she had checked the apartments’ security during move-in.
“When my mom was here a few weeks ago, we walked around and some of the gates in the back were broken,” Pylman said.
She said Richardson told her one of the gates was recently repaired.
Pylman said she was studying for an exam that day and had trouble focusing and thinking straight after the incident.
“I don’t know if I can really relax in my dorm room anymore because I’m nervous someone’s going to knock on my door and harass me again,” she said.
She said she has started being more cautious on campus and avoids walking alone.
Pylman said two people had previously knocked on her door on Aug. 29. She said two women knocked on her door asking to see the layout of her apartment and they seemed intoxicated.
During the first incident Pylman called the Oklahoma City University police non-emergency number, and on Sept. 16 she called the OCU police emergency number.
Other residence halls on campus seem more secure than Cokesbury, Pylman said. She also said she thought there were less police patrols around Cokesbury this year than in previous years.
Pylman said her mother called Richardson on Sept. 16, and Pylman talked to Richardson on Sept. 17.
Pylman said since the incident happened during the day, the man must have come in through the front gate. She said Richardson told her that closing the gates during the day would be less secure, as the code for the apartments would need to be given out to more people.
Casey Kreger, director of housing and residence life, said he heard about the incident through Richardson.
Kreger said Cokesbury’s security currently includes the surrounding fence, gates requiring codes and the gates being closed outside of weekday university hours, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. There are also cameras that have 24/7 feeds in the Oklahoma City University Police Department.
“On a daily basis, the gates are kept open due to our vendors. The last thing we want to do is hand out security codes to people that are not supposed to be here during off-hours, such as the mail service, UPS, FedEx, any of the contract companies that come out and do any of the repairs down there in any of the apartments, that are hired,” he said.
These hours are also set for Cokesbury Club House’s full-time staff and OCUPD patrols in the area, Kreger said.
Kreger said the gates at Cokesbury go down sometimes, but they can be fixed by maintenance as long as they are informed the gates are broken. Kreger said maintenance does rounds of the gates every weekday morning, and repairing the gates takes top priority. These rounds include checking each pedestrian and vehicle gate and ensuring the keypads are working.
“What I was told was that, after further investigating the situation, it was an Uber driver who came to the property at 10:45 in the morning, so the front gates were open. The Uber driver had went to the wrong apartment from there, knocked on the door, announced that he was an Uber driver, announced that he was there to pick up, that the boyfriend had sent an Uber driver to pick her up, and obviously the student in that apartment was like, ‘This is not my apartment. You shouldn’t be here,’ things like that. And then from there, there was no forced entry. Nothing like that happened. And then from there, the person left,” Kreger said.
Kreger said he was informed by his staff that Pylman and her mother said the man was an Uber driver and there was no indication of entry or trying the doorknob.
Kreger said all reports were turned into OCUPD, and they are investigating further.
Pylman said the individual did try to open her door, he seemed aggressive and he did not seem like an actual Uber driver.
Kreger said the police investigation will encompass verifying the individual’s identity.
The cameras at Cokesbury are monitored 24/7, Kreger said. They have staff on-call 24/7 and the campus police can be reached 24/7, he said.
Housing is always looking for opportunities to increase security, and they are always working with their partnership company Campus Living Villages to see what can be done, Kreger said. He said last year a new camera was added to the front gate at Cokesbury to identify cars that pull in.
Kreger said students can improve their security by being aware of people who could follow them through gates and coded doors, locking their doors and ensuring their RA on-call phone numbers and the Police Department phone numbers are programmed into their phones. Students who notice any security concerns should inform maintenance or a housing office immediately.
“Students have to feel safe to be able to learn on campus. And so, if they don’t feel safe, then we’re not doing our job here being able to equip students enough comfortability within their space to be able to learn,” he said. “They’re the ones that live here 24/7, and so the big thing is to let us know just in case we do miss something.”
Kreger said if any students have similar situations, to call the campus police or housing, who will forward it to the police and ensure a report or investigation happens.
The OCUPD emergency number is (405) 208-5911.
The housing and residence life phone number is (405) 208-6363.
Interim Police Chief LaHue was unavailable for comment.
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