Letter to the Editor from Victor Arcelus

Dear College Voice Editors,

I’d like to respond to your Sept. 21 article headlined Connecticut College Sees Yet Another Voyeurism Incident by Adrien Prouty.

Voyeurism is a crime, and we take this type of incident very seriously and do not tolerate it in any form. In each instance we have experienced, we have engaged campus and local resources to support students, investigate incidents, address this invasion of privacy and hold those responsible accountable. Some solutions have been short-term steps and some are longer-term interventions.

At the start of the article, I was perplexed by the statement that the “upper administration…will always avoid using the term voyeurism.” Your reporter notes that Dean Hamlett and I used the word voyeurism in our message to campus, but this was not the only time that the senior administration has used that term in writing. A quick search shows past messages to students, faculty, staff and parents where the term voyeurism was used. These messages were sent from me, the dean of institutional equity and inclusion, the dean of the College and the president. In communicating through a campus safety bulletin or alert, Mary Savage, director of Campus Safety and Emergency Operations, needs to be as detailed as possible about what has taken place. Therefore, her messages will be specific about the incident rather than using a general term like voyeurism.

The reporter also expresses concern that the incident in 2021 was disregarded by the administration. In each of the voyeurism incidents we have had, Campus Safety has worked closely with the New London Police Department on investigations and students have been integral partners in this work to identify the people responsible for voyeurism. In 2019 and 2020, the perpetrators were identified, criminally charged and removed from campus. Unfortunately, following the 2021 incident there was not sufficient information available to identify the person who was responsible for this incident. In the years before and after the 2021 incident, there were support resources offered to students, short-term steps taken and we initiated longer-term interventions that do take time to implement.

More specifically, some initial facility related steps included:

● Adding material to cover gaps in bathroom partitions across campus
● Adding door locks to bathrooms that could operate as single-use bathrooms rather than as a community bathroom. Every residence hall had at least one bathroom that was lockable.
● Shower curtains were replaced with thicker curtains.
● Frosting was added to exterior windows where increased privacy was necessary.
● Additional towel hooks were added to all shower stalls so students can hang their towels within close reach of the shower rather than having to step into the changing area of the stall without being covered.

Beginning in May 2019, the College began working with an architectural firm to review the layouts of all bathrooms and identify renovation solutions. The priority for students and administrators has been to install floor-to-ceiling completely private toilet and shower stalls. Students have wanted this to be done immediately, but through the work done by the architects, we learned that the scale of this work would require more time. Given the complexity of these projects due to redesign of the ventilation system, the fire suppression system and lighting, along with meeting code requirements, the College needed to secure a substantial amount of funds to launch this work (roughly $12 million). The process to access capital for these projects was supposed to start in 2020, but the pandemic that began in March 2020 delayed this process to fall 2021.

Following this fall 2021 process, resources for bathroom renovations were made available in spring 2022 and the renovation of KB, as the prototype model for code approval, design and construction, was done right away in summer 2022 (I apologize that the message that Dean Hamlett and I sent earlier this semester incorrectly noted KB as a summer 2021 project). We wanted to advance the work as quickly as possible, so two small buildings (Plant and Branford) were completed during the Dec 2022/Jan 2023 winter break. Unfortunately, all the other buildings are too large to complete during the short winter break period. The remaining 16 buildings will be completed during summer 2023, 2024 and 2025. We would all like the bathrooms to be done as quickly as possible, but the reality is that they need to be done in a staggered manner in order to operate the campus in the summer, complete the bathrooms in the best way possible and complete other critical campus projects at the same time. In many cases, the bathroom work involves complete renovation of the space, which requires a large block of time to complete.

I hope the timeline and description above clarifies some areas where the Voice reporter was calling for more information. Other issues raised in the article that involve Campus Safety include the reliability of blue light phones and the College’s approach to installation of cameras. As it relates to blue light phones, Campus Safety checks each one on a monthly basis and reports any issues to Information Services, so they can facilitate the needed repairs. As far as cameras, the process of evaluating the decision to install additional cameras on campus was done very closely with SGA. The proposal about cameras along with related policies and practices were reviewed and endorsed by SGA. There was support for cameras at entrances and exits but not in hallways, which is why cameras were not placed in residential hallways.

I hope this letter helps to correct, clarify and further inform your readers about ways in which the College has responded to voyeurism incidents on our campus. On all issues, I welcome the opportunity to speak with your reporters before and after their stories are published so that they are as accurate and informative as possible.

Sincerely,

Victor Arcelus
Dean of Students