Following the shutdown of the Human Services and Design building on Friday, Design Department Chair Martin Herman has called for a town hall meeting to discuss the incident that hastened the department shut down.
The undergraduate design advisor sent an email on Monday evening to design students on behalf of Herman; the email read, “there was an incident in the department this past Friday that precipitated my request to clear the building and shut down the department for the remainder of the day.”
The incident to which the email alludes allegedly took place Friday morning in room 105 of the Human Services and Design building, during Professor David Lee’s Design 332 class.
A student in this class, senior design major Jason Satnick, said that at approximately 10:30 a.m. on Friday, a fellow design major entered the classroom wearing a dark, puffy windbreaker, a dark baseball cap pulled down over his face and reflective, wrap-around sunglasses.
Another student in the same class who wished to remain anonymous, said that the student then approached Lee and said “Somebody did me wrong, I’ll be back at 3:11.” Simultaneously, the student allegedly held out a note for the teacher to read.
Satnick said that the student then walked to the back of the classroom to junior design major Dashiell Jones’ desk and held the note out in front of him, patted Jones on the back and hastily exited the classroom.
Lee went to the door, looked down the hallway and locked the door at which point the class began talking about what had happened and asked Jones what the note said, according to Satnick. While this was taking place, Lee left the classroom and re-locked the students inside while he went to the counselor’s office to notify the head of the department of the incident.
When Lee returned to the classroom, he allegedly told the class that he had seen what looked like a handle protruding from the student’s pants, the anonymous student in the class said.
“That’s when we all freaked out I guess; we were just like ‘We want to go home!’” Satnick said. He said Lee then dismissed the class for a lunch break and told them to return at 12:15 p.m. When only a number of students returned from the break, Lee told them that the rest of class was cancelled and to go home.
Satnick said he stayed in the building to work on a project, and around 1:30 p.m. a faculty member told him that the building had been shut down.
The email that students received on Monday night indicated that “this incident was reported to the university police, and the university police conducted an investigation and interviews.” The email also stated that the Dean of Students and the College of the Arts recommended that the Design Department re-open and resume regular routine; “this means that classes can resume normally,” the email stated.
Herman indicated in his email that the meeting he requested was intending to gather representative from the university police, the Dean’s office and the Dean of Students office in order to discuss safety and proper procedures.
The town hall meeting will take place on Wednesday in the Duncan Anderson Gallery from 12:30-1:15 p.m. According to the email, there will be a separate meeting in the same gallery for faculty at 11:45 a.m.
University Police have not yet commented about this incident, and as of Monday, the incident had not been included in the media log.