Man Arrested at Hill House, Stirs Questions of Policing and Safety on Campus
Anna Mitchell ’22
Photo courtesy of Sarah Lawrence College.
In the afternoon on Tuesday, October 6, a Hill House resident reported to Campus Safety that they were being followed by a person they did not know.
The man, who has since been identified as 29 year-old Marquise Harris, was arrested by the Yonkers Police after Campus Safety called to report him as trespassing. The Sarah Lawrence resident’s identity has not been disclosed.
The incident occurred while student activists — on campus and off — are leading and engaging in nationwide uprisings against police brutality and institutional racism, calling to defund or abolish the police in order to fund healthcare, education and affordable housing and strengthen systems of community care.
Some have turned their eye inwards — on Sarah Lawrence — to examine what “safety” means to the campus community and who is involved in defining it.
Still, Harris’ case did not seem to inspire any direct actions. Perhaps because Campus Safety did not release a campus-wide account of the October 6 incident until October 12, six days after Yonkers Police arrested Harris at Hill House.
Director of Campus Safety James “Jim” Verdicchio sent the October 12 “Safety Alert” email, which contained surveillance photographs of Harris in the Bronxville area.
According to Verdicchio, the officer on duty in Hill House that Tuesday called fellow Campus Safety officers’ support after students reportedly heard Harris knocking on their doors and saw him in the elevator.
A representative of the Yonkers Police Department wrote over email that the officers on the scene arrested Harris due to the initial call from Campus Safety about trespassing and because they claimed that “he struggled with officers and resisted.”
Harris was arrested by the Yonkers Police again on the night of October 20 and has eight cases pending against him. The Westchester County District Attorney’s Office is currently prosecuting his case, according to Yonkers Police.
Ava Mcdonald ’23, a Residential Adviser in Hill House, said she was “surprised and a little unsettled” when her supervisor in Residence Life contacted her shortly after the incident, detailing what Campus Safety reported had happened in an email.
A friend texted to see if she was all right, but none of the residents in her Hill House community reached out to her for information or support, Mcdonald recalled.
The October 12 email notice encouraged students to keep their doors and windows locked “to avoid being a potential victim of a crime.” It read: “Never hesitate to report anything suspicious.”
But Mcdonald expressed that any suspicion her residents are feeling is towards COVID-19, not the fear of strangers on campus.
Other students echoed her concerns and stressed their reliance on one another with the looming threat of contracting or spreading the virus.
Tied to concerns for their greater community in Yonkers and New York City, many students living on campus reported that reliance on one another — trust — has been vital over the past two months. It has kept them from despondency and isolation and provided hope, they said.
As if trying to tap into the same sentiment of togetherness, the October 12 notice concluded: “We are one Sarah Lawrence community, and it’s imperative that we continue to look out for one another.”
But student activists are still asking: What does it mean to look out for one another? Does it have to involve more vigilance and more policing –– or are there radical alternatives?