When John Doe moved into Residential College (ResCo) at the start of the school year, he noticed a group of six students intermittently confronting him in the hallway.
The group, often appearing in smaller subgroups, would block his path down the hallway and knock on his door to get him to open it. Doe, a pseudonym for a student granted anonymity by The Butler Collegian due to his fears of retaliation, said the group of six would “ding-dong-ditch” many other people in their hallway, but they only stayed at his door to get him to come out of his room.
The Butler Collegian was able to verify that instances of repetitive knocking did occur through texts and emails obtained through Doe. On one occasion on Sept. 8, according to text messages obtained by The Butler Collegian, the student’s Resident Assistant (RA) texted Doe: “Are they bothering you still? I’m in my room and could hear them at your door. I’ve told them they need to stop.”
Doe’s RA declined to comment due to confidentiality in their role as an RA.
Doe texted back: “Yeah, they’ve been knocking on my door for a bit. It’s kinda annoying.”
According to Doe, the group would call him butchered versions of his name because his “real name was too foreign to pronounce, too hard to pronounce.” He said he had been doing his best to avoid the group, despite their repeated attempts to get him to leave his room.
“It was a lot of weirdly predatory things [that they were doing],” Doe said. “On the Friday before Labor Day weekend, [the group] asked me if I was gonna be alone that day. There was one time where they — not all six, but some of the guys — followed me back to my room and pushed against the door and demanded a room tour from me. Eventually, all of this peaked when they impersonated the [Butler University Police Department] (BUPD).”
Doe said that during most of these instances, the group would cover the peephole on his door from the outside. He attempted to distance himself from the situation, studying on different floors and mostly staying out of the hallway until the group allegedly impersonated BUPD officers on Sept. 11.
“That’s what made me actually afraid for my life,” Doe said. “I felt a gut instinct this time that I should not open the door. It was just horrifying because that was when I realized they’re willing to do sketchy things. I feel like everyone knows you shouldn’t be impersonating police to get people out of their rooms.”
Doe said he believes that the harassment was mainly targeted at him because he is openly gay and a person of color.
After the alleged impersonation — which Doe said was the only time all six people were present — Doe and his now former roommate reported the incident to their RA, which Doe said prompted the RA to file a police report.
On Friday, Sept. 18, Doe noticed part of the group entering Atherton Union as he returned to ResCo to do his laundry. In the few minutes it took Doe to get his laundry and go to his hallway’s laundry room, Doe said they found him and cornered him in the laundry room.
“They cornered me, covered the doors and stuff — that was the horrifying part — because then they said, ‘Hey, [degrading version of Doe’s name], did you hear? Someone snitched on us. Did you snitch?’” Doe said. “After I denied it — at least tried to deny it — they were like, ‘Yeah, that’s insane, man. We’re gonna go, let’s hunt down the snitch.’”
Doe said that the RA on duty that night, whose name he did not know, happened to walk by as this interaction occurred, making eye contact and causing the group to leave.
Doe ran back to his room to drop off his laundry basket before meeting with his RA, who lived next to him and his roommate. Doe said they took a walk while he explained what happened, and came back to a room behind the ResCo front desk where the RA on duty and members of BUPD joined them.
Doe said that BUPD took a statement — although he is unsure how they may have recorded it — and that he was moved into a temporary dorm that night. He received an email from BUPD the next day, saying that his case would be forwarded to Student Conduct and Title IX.
In an email to Doe from BUPD detective Courtney White, she stated, “I want to ensure that you have ongoing support regarding this issue. For this reason, I am forwarding your case to Student Conduct and Title IX, so they can assist you further.”
Stabbing or false report?
Doe then did not see his roommate until Sunday, Sept. 20, at dinner, during which the roommate — who is referred to as such by The Butler Collegian for anonymity purposes — alleged he was stabbed in the hand with a screwdriver by two of the six on Saturday night.
“They were calling me the F [slur],” the roommate told The Butler Collegian. “They were calling me ‘douchebag.’ They were calling me a Nazi term for [gay people].”
The roommate, who is also openly gay, alleges that the people who he claims attacked him said that he was the “next best thing” since Doe was not there.
The roommate, who is now being investigated by BUPD for false informing, provided The Butler Collegian with the address of the urgent care facility where he said he got his hand treated, but was not able to produce documentation of the visit.
“I saw the bandage [on his hand], and I saw that there [was something like] stitches coming out of his wound, and so I said, ‘Ooh, we need to text [our RA]. We need to call [them]. We need to do something,’” Doe said.
At the time of dinner on Sunday, the roommate had not reported the alleged incident to anyone. Doe made their RA aware, and the two of them walked the roommate to BUPD to make a police report.
“When I asked him why he didn’t report it on the day of, he told me he didn’t want to make me worried, which seems really dumb because that just makes it worse for me now,” Doe said.
Doe said neither he nor the RA were in the room when the roommate made a report to BUPD, and that he and his RA had returned home after the roommate went inside the station.
According to Doe, he never spoke to BUPD after Sept. 18 regarding the alleged incident and harassment.
On Monday, Sept. 21, Doe contacted Butler Alliance about what his roommate had told him. Throughout that week, the roommate met with both Title IX and the dean of students, citing that he felt like officials from both offices did not believe his story.
“[Because there is no camera footage of the stabbing] the dean [of students] and Title IX [coordinator] are saying that I did it to myself,” the roommate told The Butler Collegian.
The Butler Collegian was able to verify that there appear to be no cameras in the “box area” where the roommate alleges the stabbing took place, only finding one at the start and end of their ResCo hallway.
On Oct. 1, The Butler Collegian requested camera footage from the ResCo hallway, alongside recorded statements and otherwise relevant case materials from BUPD. Chief of public safety John Conley informed The Butler Collegian that no materials could be released due to their relevance to the false informing investigation.
On Sept. 24, Doe met with Kelly Freiberger, the director of student rights and responsibilities, from the dean of students’ office about the alleged harassment. Doe echoed the sentiment that he believed people in the office did not believe his claims.
“It felt a lot like they already didn’t believe me,” Doe said. “It was a lot of questions that were really, really specific. They asked me, ‘When the guys were pushing on your door trying to get in, how many seconds did they push?’”
The following Monday, Sept. 28, Doe was emailed by Title IX, asking to have a meeting with him — several days after the roommate had met with the coordinator, Rhyan Smith. The same day, Doe’s roommate was informed by BUPD that “making false allegations of crime in an attempt to harm others is a crime.”
“False informing … in this case it appears to be a B misdemeanor crime that may have been committed on your part,” a Sept. 28 email to the roommate from BUPD detective lieutenant Jeffrey Wager stated.
Doe then met with Smith and was told all the reports of harassment were being dismissed.
“They gave me a paper saying that all the actions that have happened are being dismissed — the guys would not be charged with anything,” Doe said. “They talked about how there wasn’t enough evidence [of the harassment], how they only deal in the academic part of [cases]. They were saying because me and [my roommate] do not remember exactly who [the harassers] were and what happened [down] to the second, actually, it wasn’t enough evidence.”
The Notice of Dismissal of OIE Concerns given to Doe stated, “After consideration of the available information, OIE has determined that there is insufficient information to substantiate the reported conduct or reliably attribute conduct that may implicate University policy to the identified respondents.”
In the wake of BUPD’s Sept. 28 email, stating the roommate was being investigated for false informing, Doe’s roommate withdrew from Butler and said he returned home because of the investigation.
At the time of publication, no charges have been filed.
On Friday, Sept. 25, The Butler Collegian reached out to Title IX coordinator Rhyan Smith, director of residence life Shannon Mulqueen, dean of students Martha Dziwlik, detective Courtney White and President James Danko for comment. No responses were received.
Days later, The Butler Collegian received a statement from Conley about the alleged stabbing, via university spokesperson Mark Apple.
“The Butler University Police Department takes all reports of harassment, threats, and violence seriously. When this incident was reported, BUPD conducted a thorough investigation into the allegations and reviewed the available evidence.
That investigation found significant discrepancies between the allegations and the evidence collected by BUPD. Based on the totality of the evidence gathered during the investigation, BUPD found no evidence that any crime had been committed by the accused students.
We understand the seriousness of any allegation involving harassment or violence, and particularly allegations that an individual was targeted because of their identity. Every member of the Butler community should feel comfortable reporting concerns to BUPD. We will continue to investigate those reports thoroughly, objectively, and based on the available evidence.”
On Sept. 29, The Butler Collegian received a letter from a lawyer representing one of the accused students, stating his client was cleared of any wrongdoing by Title IX and requesting that The Butler Collegian respect the client’s privacy.
On Sept. 30, The Butler Collegian requested an interview with the lawyer’s client and the others who were accused. The lawyer declined, stating that his client “prefers to put this behind him.”
On Oct. 12, The Butler Collegian submitted a formal records request to BUPD for relevant case materials. The Butler Collegian followed up on Oct. 18, prompting a response on Oct. 19. The request for additional investigative materials was denied due to the active investigation into false informing. BUPD did provide The Butler Collegian with the four requested case reports, which stated what crimes were reported, the dates, times and locations.
On Oct. 19, The Butler Collegian contacted the six students accused of harassment with questions to give them the opportunity to provide comments on the alleged incidents. No response was received at the time of publication.
Dismissal
On Oct. 2, Conley and Khalilah Marbury, the vice president for DEI & student affairs, sent out a campus-wide statement to reiterate that they found no evidence to substantiate claims of harassment by fellow students.
In the email, they stated that the university “has been actively working to support all individuals involved and impacted by these events,” and “Butler University remains deeply committed to fostering an inclusive, safe, and respectful community … We do not tolerate harassment, bullying, threats, discrimination, or retaliation of any kind, and we take all reports of concerning behavior seriously.”
At the bottom of the email, there was a call for all members of the community to refrain from speculation and allow “campus processes to fulfill their purposes.”
“It’s just been a lot because this has all been continually ramping up,” Doe said. “At first, they were just creepy to me and being assholes … Then no one got justice.”
The Butler Collegian contacted Title IX coordinator Rhyan Smith on Oct. 26 to offer an opportunity to share further comment. Smith declined to share anything else.
In total, The Butler Collegian attempted to contact and receive comments from 20 sources in the process of investigating.