Phone harassment traced to L.A., suspect arrested

Lauren Sutherland Assistant News Editor

The Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department discovered the identity of the man responsible for a series of prank phone calls made to Vassar students over the past year. The L.A. authorities, who contacted the man on April 5, have not yet revealed his identity to Campus Security, nor have they said whether or not charges will be pressed. However, the Sheriff’s Department confirmed they have traced the calls to the perpetrator and procured an admission of guilt.

According to Security documentation of the calls, Vassar students were awoken in the early hours of the morning by the male caller. Reportedly soft-spoken, the man would confess to being “messed up on ecstasy” or other substances and would encourage students to guess his identity. The caller would then assume the identity of the conjectures and would try to keep students on the phone for long periods of time, up to an hour. Reports state that the calls would generally progress to a sexual and harassing nature.

Associate Security Director Kim Squillace noted that certain emerging patterns in the incidence of the calls helped Security and Computer Information Services (CIS) anticipate them.

“It seemed that the caller knew about the number system associated with the rooms,” said Squillace. “He could have been calling over breaks to listen to answering machines, in order to get a sense of the students living in each room.” Squillace also said that the caller never engaged male students in conversation.

Tracing the calls to California

While Security has not discounted the possibility that the identified caller is behind years of phone harassment at the College, the first of the series of calls in question were reported in April 2005.

“We received similar reports a few years ago, and it’s possible that the same person has been calling for three to four years,” said Squillace.

The frequency of subsequent harassment reports increased steadily; the most recent count of reports filed in 2005-2006 totals about 26 prank calls. In October, Security contacted the Town of Poughkeepsie Police Department to file a formal complaint and enlisted the help of the District Attorney’s office to obtain a subpoena. The disturbances were traced to a cell phone with a California area code, and in November, Security notified the L.A. Sheriff’s Department.

The expansion of the investigation temporarily stalled its progress, which Squillace attributed to the protocol at the L.A. Sheriff’s Department. “Our understanding is that the Sheriff’s Department looked at every call as a single complaint,” said Squillace. “More than one complaint must be filed in order to merit formal investigation.”

In the Poughkeepsie police’s appeal to the L.A. Sheriff’s Department, they likened Vassar to “one big house, in which students were simply precious children with different phone extensions,” said Squillace, rather than a cluster of distinct residences.

New phone technology aids investigation

The Office of Campus Security and CIS work in concert with telecommunications provider Paetec to maintain records of outgoing and incoming phone calls by monitoring “trunks,” or phone lines that come into the College.

“This call-tracking technology is also the foundation of how we take care of matters like billing,” said CIS Telecommunications Manager John Kladis. “However, the CIS department takes prank calls very seriously, and if we receive complaints of harassment, we request reports from the telephone company, from which we can pull numbers and track callers.”
Kladis added that Security must provide authorization before CIS can access telephone records.

According to Squillace, Vassar has been “plagued” by harassing phone calls for years, but has only recently had access to the technology that allows CIS and Security to accurately record them. Before entering a contract with Paetec, the school dealt with another telecommunications provider that had limited ability to track calls.

Threat of phone harassment still present

Vassar’s recent investigative efforts seem to have effectively stopped one man from bothering students on campus. However, Squillace noted the ongoing risk of harassing phone calls.

“We’ve linked another number from New Jersey with some of the complaints filed by students,” said Squillace. There is little evidence to substantiate a connection to the California caller, but the calls emphasize the likelihood that prank calls will continue to be problematic for College residents.

“The man who confessed to harassing the students [to the L.A. Sheriff’s Department] claimed he was able to obtain the names of students from an AOL chatline,” said Squillace. “While we don’t know if that’s true, we are aware of how easy it is to find personal information on the Internet.”

Vassar’s website features a student directory, in which the names and dorm phone numbers of students are accessible.

In order to limit the amount of personal information available to strangers, Security advises students to use answering machines with computerized voices and not to record their names.

CIS recommends that students who receive persistent and harassing phone calls should depress the phone hook, dial *2, and report the date and time the calls were received. This will raise a "flag" in the system that allows CIS to zero in on the call faster without having to sift through extraneous data.

Kladis stressed that students ought to report all suspicious phone calls to Campus Security. “Students need to resist the urge to simply hang up the phone, roll over, and go back to sleep,” said Kladis. “The call that they receive may be one in a series of calls, and not just a random occurrence. In the case of prank calls, every report is a good report.”