By Julia Berkman
TW: This article contains discussion of voyeurism and explicit sexual acts
Lately, Bellingham has become less of a city of subdued excitement and more of a cesspool of shady perverts. With at least four instances of indecent exposure, voyeurism or attempted break-ins on or around campus in the past few weeks, Western students on and off-campus are on guard from peeping toms.
Two instances of indecent exposure or peeping tomfoolery were reported on campus in the past two weeks, both on the Ridge. Off campus, two houses of students living in the York District called authorities after a man was spotted peeping in their windows, and in one case masturbating.
Shayna Nowicki awoke early on Oct. 13 to find a man in a mask masturbating outside her window. Nowicki, along with roommates Sophie Marinkovich and Sydney Stewart, called 911 and were met at their house by authorities.
“I was yelling ‘I’m going to call the police,’ which I actually wasn’t going to, because I just don’t like calling the police, but I did it anyway,” Nowicki said, in an interview at her home on Nov. 1.
“I generally don’t feel safe around police officers, however I felt like the police that came to our house listened to us and they had a crime scene investigator and a K9 unit. It seems like they want to figure it out. I mean, I don’t know what they can do at this point,” said Stewart, a human services major.
Reports of a man shining a flashlight in windows or masturbating outside student residences have been in the news since last year. The Bellingham Herald puts the number of reports in the teens.
“Some of the cases show similarities, such as the suspect exposing himself or masturbating in a public place. In other instances, the suspect attracted the attention of people inside a home and exposed himself near a door or window,” wrote Herald reporter Denver Pratt in an article from Oct. 27 entitled “She saw him in the window’s reflection, then he exposed himself. Do we have serial peeper?”
One thing is always the same: the peeper is gone by the time police arrive.
“It just seems ridiculous that he wasn’t caught. The cops were in cars, I don’t understand how they didn’t find him if he was on foot,” Nowicki said.
Stewart agreed.
“It took them 10 minutes to come to us at least. A person can be gone in ten minutes,” she said.
“Shayna’s window isn’t directly facing the street, so you couldn’t just walk by and know it was a girl’s bedroom from a glance. You’d have to scope it out. This person was not casual, he was set up wearing a mask and condom. He knew what he going out to do..”
The subject not only peeped into Nowicki’s room, but also knocked on her window so she would wake up. This was between 3 and 4 a.m.
“At first, I couldn’t tell what it was, so I turned my lights on, which I think made him able to see me more. At that point I freaked out and I was slamming on the window and telling him to go away. He didn’t,” Nowicki said. That’s when Nowicki and her roommates called the police.
Less than 24 hours later, a house on North Garden reported a man of similar build and height masturbating on their back porch around 9:45 p.m.
That weekend, two voyeuristic events were reported on the Ridge, according to Western Alerts.
Late Saturday evening at the Gamma lounge, a student reported a man attempting to break in by rattling the door and knocking. When they refused to let him in, the man exposed himself to the student and then ran off. University Police were contacted, but he was not found.
The next day, Oct. 29, a Western student and her friend from Seattle were celebrating Halloweekend at Ridgeway Kappa when they found a man in the common shower of the second floor women’s restroom around 4 a.m. One woman noticed feet in the shower but no running water, so she drew back the curtain to find a man who looked to be in his 30’s crouched hiding. He ran out when the student found him.
“He was described as a white male, with dark brown hair, stubby facial hair, about 6 feet tall, weighing about 220 pounds and wearing a gray t-shirt, gray sweatpants and white socks. He was not wearing shoes,” said a Western Alert sent out on Monday.
Many wondered why the Western Alert took more than 24 hours to be sent out. According to a Western Front interview with Paul Cocke, Director of Communications at Western, the alert was delayed until further investigation of the incident. However, most would argue that Western Alerts should be used for urgent matters rather than in-depth reports. Many students on the Ridge may have benefitted from a quick spread of information.
Further off-campus, students won’t even get the luxury of a Western Alert when shit goes south.
“I also wonder how many cases are happening that we aren’t even hearing about. In our situation we knew it was happening to us because we are us, but it wasn’t reported as an Western Alert. The only reason the other one [referring to the event on Oct. 29] was a Western Alert is because it was on campus. So now that things are happening with the police directly I don’t know how often people are hearing about things like this,” said Sophie Marinkovich, a studio art major and Nowicki’s roommate.
It was up to Marinkovich, Stewart and their other roommates who attend Western to spread the news. Otherwise, students living in the York District outside of the Western Alert sphere may never know that they’re vulnerable.
“All I have to say is that everyone needs to be safe and always go in groups of people,” said one victim (who wished to remain anonymous) in a Facebook post, “Especially girls. We are a target.”
Nowicki is shaken following the incident on Oct. 13.
“I like to go out alone, like to go to bars alone or whatever, but I don’t like doing that now. For a while it was making me unable to sleep, but that’s more or less gone away,” she said.
“I think it would be healing for the people who this has happened to communicate with each other somehow. I don’t know if it would be a Facebook group or what, and I’m sure a lot of people wouldn’t want to talk about it or admit that happened to them, but I’d like to see something like that happen.”
If you or someone you know has been affected by voyeurism in Bellingham, they can talk to a counselor at CASAS or DVSAS if they are not a student.