Stalking on Campus: Uncovering Student Experiences

In the past two years, six cases of stalking on Amherst College campus were published in the Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Report (referred to as the Clery report). Through interpersonal conversations, I had learned of nine instances of stalking on campus during this time period, and I interviewed four of them. Our interviews addressed both their individual experiences and the administrative response. All students interviewed wished to remain anonymous due to safety and privacy concerns. 

What is Stalking?

Catherine Berryman, the director of civil rights and Title IX at Amherst, shared that one of the most significant issues with stalking is that often students don’t entirely know what the term entails — which makes it harder for students to take the harm seriously, and report or seek action. 

“Last year somebody had attended a training that I did, and walked [into the Title IX office] later that afternoon and said, ‘I just put it together when you started talking about what stalking was, that I've actually had this experience,’” Berryman said.

On the other hand, Berryman explained that people who are causing harm may also be unaware that they’re making someone uncomfortable and may believe it “to be over-enthusiastic friendship.” 

The traditional definition of being stalked, Berryman noted, is “somebody basically showing up wherever [their target is], and having a sense of their schedule, and so making themselves present, and attempting to interact with them.” The definition of stalking has also changed in an increasingly online world. Detective Sergeant Cara Sullivan, a member of the Amherst College Police Department, noted that most of the stalking behavior she’s investigated have been through electronic means. Berryman said that the college can take action even when stalking occurs online, including instances of excessive texting or location tracking.

Katie Freeman, Civil Rights and Title IX intake, care, and education coordinator, and Berryman work to educate the college community on recognizing this “unwelcome communication” through their Title IX trainings. However, they said that Claire Dutton, the Wellbeing Educator for Sexual Respect, and the Peer Educators, were the college’s primary method of education and prevention. 

The most common avenue for individuals affected by stalking has been filing a No Communication and Restricted Proximity Order (NCRPO). An NCRPO is the college’s version of a No Contact Order as  the college’s small size and community makes geographic limitations difficult. Unlike court orders, these orders are not unilateral and neither party can approach or engage with the other — regardless of who caused harm. 

The purpose of the order is to stop all communication, including online and third party communication. The Title IX office will then meet with both parties to make sure they understand the grounds for the order. “It’s intended to be non-punitive,” Berryman shared, unless the order is violated — which is a violation of the code of conduct. 

Student Experiences

The first student I spoke to, “Student A,” was followed around by another student at a party her freshman year. Student A recalls that a student got close to her and her friends on the dance floor, and pressed up against her. When Student A and her friends moved back and forth between Hitchcock House and Seelye Hall, he followed them. When they went into the women’s bathroom, he was waiting for them outside. Eventually, Student A said they were helped by a group of upperclassmen who had “heard that [the guy] was a little weird to women before” and made him leave. However, the student shared that she still felt afraid walking home that night. “It’s very easy to find out where people live, because we all have key cards to everyone’s dorm,” she said. 

One of the upperclassmen who helped her was a community advisor (CA) who, as a mandatory reporter, reported the incident to Amherst’s Title IX office. Student A, however, didn’t follow up with Title IX because she felt it “wasn’t important enough necessarily to report.”

Another student, “Student B,” went to the Title IX office after online harassment following a break up, citing the “sheer number of texts” she received. Even after explicitly asking her ex-boyfriend not to contact her and blocking him on other platforms, he began to spam her with messages after a run-in in the Science Center. Freeman said that most of the stalking incidents she sees follow a break-up. “That’s a prime time for stalking behaviors to start, when people just can’t really let go,” she said. 

Student B, who is a CA herself, eventually got a NCRPO from Title IX. “I just couldn’t focus, because my mind was just constantly on not being left alone,” she shared. This was, in part, because of Amherst’s small size. “It was just like a game of, ‘Where should I be to not run into him?’” she said.

Another student, “Student C,” faced similar concerns when her next-door neighbor repeatedly acted in ways that made her uncomfortable. “Sometimes I felt like he would listen for when my door would open, and I would leave, and then he would leave two minutes after,” she said. 

For Student C, this dynamic was especially complicated because her relationship with the harasser began as a friendship before it escalated to uncomfortable interactions. “He started showing up at [my] work. That was the first thing that I found, at first, just annoying,” she shared. He gave her gifts, which the Title IX office cited as another common sign of stalking, and she experienced online harassment. “It was constant messaging of ‘Where are you? What are you doing?’” she said. It wasn’t until Student C told him to stop contacting her that “he started pushing even more” — it was then she realized it was stalking. 

After Student C blocked him, he showed up at her job and came up very close to her, following her around as she was cleaning up plates. She said he was “very emotional, very confused.” She explained to him that she had been explicitly clear over text that she did not want to be contacted by him. She couldn’t leave — she was working and getting paid to be there.

“I turned to him, and I was like, 'If you keep talking to me right now. I’m going to report you to Title IX,' Student C said. But that didn’t stop him — he continued to speak to her. Later that day, Student C walked into the Title IX office with her friend and filed a report. At that point, she had been experiencing this behavior for a year. 

Student C, like many of the people I spoke with, struggled at first to believe that what she was experiencing was harassment and worthy of a Title IX report. “I thought it was just clinginess,” she said. 

Another student, Student D, felt the same way. “I was very worried this whole time that I was gaslighting myself and that it wasn’t that bad.” she said. Student D’s incident of stalking was the most extreme case among those I interviewed. 

Boundaries Crossed

Her freshman year, Student D began to feel uncomfortable with a student she was tutoring. “The first things he said that were uncomfortable weren’t so bad. They were more subjectively weird,” she shared. She recalls he once asked her, "Aren't you scared to be locked alone in a room with me?” Student D described these comments as “gradually escalating.” 

“I think this is a very common feature with people that do sexual violence, is that they start trying to not break the boundary explicitly, but they will push the boundary,” she said. 

These sessions were between just the two of them — there were no witnesses to these interactions and so Student D struggled to validate her discomfort. It was only after the student asked to kiss her that she felt that something was objectively wrong, and she asked to stop tutoring him. But when their sessions stopped, he continued to text her, asking where she was. One day Student D received an email from him with the subject line, “LOOKING FOR YOU”.

“I was scared to leave my room because I had heard from multiple other people that he had been in my dorm looking for my name on the wall,” she said. That night, she mentioned the incident to a friend of hers, who was a CA, and he reported it to Title IX. 

“I still had this worry that I was overreacting,” she shared. “All I could think was ‘I am so worried … I don't want him to feel bad.’” This is common for victims of sexual violence, Student D shared, particularly for women who are socialized to attend to the needs of others before their own. 

Advised by her CDC, she took down the name card that was attached to her door. However, she decided against an NCRPO — at the time, she still felt like a formal report was an overreaction. However, she continued to face online harassment. Only when he sent her a graphic poem full of sexual allusions, did she decide to call her Community Development Coordinator (CDC) and file a NCRPO.

The summer afterwards, both individuals were on campus. During this time, he cooperated with the NCRPO. But, the next semester, Student D received a knock on her door from him. She locked the door and called the police and her CDCs — but it took almost 45 minutes for the police to remove him from the building. “He was pretending that he couldn't speak English, so he didn't understand what they were saying,” she said. 

For the next few months, Student D described a series of vague communications with administration in which he was in and out of police custody. At one point, he returned to campus illegally.

“For a long time the college couldn't confirm where he was,” she said. Only, in the spring, a year after the incident began, was the student officially expelled. 

Complications with Title IX Involvement

In more extreme cases, like Student D’s, Title IX will help the student issue a court order, which extends beyond the college and often has geographic limitations, meaning the offender cannot come within a certain number of feet of the person harmed. In those cases, students will work with ACPD and Sullivan in addition to Title IX. However, the state of Massachusetts defines stalking on stricter grounds than the Uniform Crime Reporting Handbook’s definition, which qualifies cases for the Title IX office and the Clery report. 

“If I were to criminally charge someone with stalking in Massachusetts, I would have to prove the threat of death or bodily injury,” Sullivan wrote in an email. 

While NCRPOs and court orders are all pathways for people who have experienced harm, Berryman emphasized that nobody is forced through any of these processes. “I really think it's important that people understand that our office is going to be guided in the steps that we take by the person who brings their concern to us, who had the experience,” Berryman said. 

This means that many students, like Student A, may be contacted by Title IX and then choose to not go through the process. However, Berryman emphasized that most students do respond and “within the people who respond, the vast majority of them are interested in meeting.”

However, for some of these students, the process of reporting and taking the initiative towards action can feel like a burden. 

Students C and D, who reported individuals who knew where they lived, had to change rooms, while the person who caused harm was relatively unaffected. “I thought all of that was outrageous, [Title IX] was putting the burden on me to take care of everything,” Student D said. However, Student C felt differently,“I was very comforted by the fact that he didn't know what room I was moving to.” The process of moving, however, was stressful. 

This was a common pattern. While Title IX assured students that no action will be taken without their consent, many of the students I spoke with wished they could have had less involvement in the process. 

“Why didn’t [the administration] do anything when [they knew] that [the offender] had multiple reports from different people and violated no contact orders, showing that he doesn’t care?” Student D asked. 

The Title IX office noted that, in certain cases, the office would take action on behalf of a “certain pattern of behavior,” rather than an individual who was affected. However, they emphasized that it would be a rare experience.

The Broader Administration’s Response 

While there were individuals who Student D found helpful throughout the situation, like Sullivan and her CDC, she felt a lack of support from the administration overall as she dealt with her stalker. 

When asked for comment on this situation, Tissi-Gassoway shared the following in an email to The Student: “I want to acknowledge that the circumstances of this case led to significant disruptions to [Student D’s] life on campus, and to reassure the community that we sought — and continue to seek — to do everything possible to support her throughout this very difficult experience.

“I really felt like there were individuals that protected me, but the college felt like an opponent,” Student D said, claiming that the administration was more concerned with the campus’s image than her own wellbeing. 

When the student who had caused her harm returned to campus unexpectedly, the first question Vice President of Student Affairs and Dean of Students Angie Tissi-Gassoway had asked her was “do your parents know?” 

Student D interpreted the intent behind this question as fear of her parents retaliating or suing the school. 

Tissi-Gassoway shared her reasoning for this inquiry:  “In order to protect student privacy under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) and recognizing that parents are a vital source of support for many of our students, we often ask students who are facing a crisis whether they have been in touch with their family members before the college conducts outreach. In this case, with [Student D’s] permission, we were able to contact her parents to talk them through the College’s response, and my team was in regular (often daily) contact with them to provide updates, ask for their feedback, and ensure that we were providing [Student D] the best support possible.”

Student D also noted that, when the student who had caused harm was removed from her dorm, she had been told by the police that, “if he does come back into the dorm, [they] will arrest him.” 

However, it took three more instances of him returning to the building, before they finally arrested him for trespassing. At this point, he was breaking the law, not just campus policy. “He's done so much already, what would it take for [the administration] to actually do something about his actions?” Student D said.

While the school bought him a flight home, there was nobody there to verify that he boarded the plane — and so he didn’t. From the airport, Student D received a voicemail that included threats to her life.  

“I asked the administration and Dean Angie, ‘Why did it have to get this far to the point where he was giving me death threats?’” Student D said.

He returned to campus where he was once again arrested for trespassing; at this point, on account of the death threat she received, Student D was able to file a criminal charge against her offender. While she filed a “Harassment Prevention Order,” her offender was taken to a hospital for a mental screening to see if he was fit for court. But “the hospital let him out secretly, without telling us,” Student D shared. Instead of being escorted to court where he was to be charged for three misdemeanors and a felony, he took a flight back to his home country. 

“I couldn't trust [the administration] to protect me because they had let so much slide,” Student D shared. 

In her response, Tissi-Gassoway clarified the various offices involved in addressing Student D’s incident. “This was a particularly challenging case,” she noted — one that involved direct engagement from across multiple offices and departments external to the college, including the District Attorney and the Department of Homeland Security. She noted that each of these parties “engaged with us promptly but not always immediately.”

Tissi-Gassoway went on to share that the college followed their standard safety and disciplinary process when addressing Student D’s case. 

For Student D, however, her sustained involvement with this process defined her semester. “It completely took my life from me in the fall,” she shared. Student D spent much of her time working with Title IX and ACPD to file a protection order in court. While Sullivan guided her through the process and drove her to court, because the college doesn’t hire lawyers for students she had to write her own affidavit. 

Student D also felt like she had to fight to gain information and updates that were relevant to her safety. “I wasn’t even able to worry about my emotional well being,” Student D said. “I was worrying about how I'm going to fight this battle with the administration to try to get my rights clear or understand.” 

Overall, she wished the process had been more victim-forward, with less of a burden on her to continually meet with the various involved offices, a process she found re-traumatizing. Student D even noted that her experience would have been better had the administration talked to her more kindly and “been more human about the whole process.” She started to bring her friends to meetings for emotional support. “I knew that if it was just me, they would outnumber me,” she shared.

Lingering Effects

Most of the students I spoke with shared that even after they had filed an NCRPO or had been issued court-ordered protection, they still found themselves struggling through the effects of the incident. 

“Sometimes it'll just come over me, this big feeling of unsafety where I'll have to get up and lock my door no matter what I'm doing.” Student D said. Student C also noted she has since been very vigilant about locking all doors behind her, especially considering her offender had once walked in unexpectedly to a friend’s dorm.

These experiences also affected the students’ academic performances. Student B shared she did “pretty badly in some of [her] classes,”on account of the anxiety of the situation. Student D considered taking a semester off or transferring.

“I had to miss class to go to court … I ended up having to withdraw from a class because it was so bad. So now that’s always on my transcript,” Student D said. 

Most of the students I spoke with also claimed that their experience has changed how they interact with men. Of the nine cases I learned of, eight of the victims were women and all of the offenders were men. 

“Every time a man is nice to me, I have this feeling in the back of my mind ‘I thought he was nice at first too,’” Student D said. Student B also noted that she is now wary of obsessive behavior in romantic partners, specifically anyone who is “demanding a lot of attention all the time and in an unsustainable way.”

But while the students who were harmed were profoundly affected by their experiences with stalking, most felt their offender hadn’t learned his lesson.

“Despite everything … he just didn’t understand, he mentally and physically just did not comprehend that his actions were making me and others uncomfortable,” Student C said. “I feel like I’m definitely not the only girl he has done this to, and I feel like there will be more girls.”

In more than half of the people I spoke with — they were not the offender’s first victim. Many of the students knew and were aware of each other’s offenders. Student D criticized this idea of “known perpetrators” or harassers on campus.

“The college needs to be assessing the threats on campus, especially if multiple women are reporting something. They need to be taking action to ensure the safety of students before it gets so bad that they are literally threatening [students] and making their lives feel perpetually unsafe,” she said.