Imposter lives in Stanford Dorms for over a year

[mythbuster]

https://stanforddaily.com/2022/10/31/stanford-knew-about-the-campus-imposter-for-a-year-he-kept-coming-back/

Part of me is surprised this doesn't happen more often. But the part about the RAs not being given the roster of who lives in the dorm because of privacy concerns is rather over the top.

Has this ever happened on your campus?

[lightning]

The same thing happened at Stanford around 2007. From what I remember, she got away with it for almost an entire academic year, but she was completely harmless.

Stanford is a very open community. For example, in some units, even after you have long left Stanford in an active and official capacity, if you get a faculty member to request it, you can still have access to some facilities. This happened a lot with ambiguously ABD grad students, ambiguously graduated grad students, ambiguously post-post-doc researchers, and ambiguous "visiting scholars."

[dismalist]

Were they paying rent? If not, why not? If so, where is the problem? :-)

[marshwiggle]

The same thing happened at Stanford around 2007. From what I remember, she got away with it for almost an entire academic year, but she was completely harmless.

Stanford is a very open community. For example, in some units, even after you have long left Stanford in an active and official capacity, if you get a faculty member to request it, you can still have access to some facilities. This happened a lot with ambiguously ABD grad students, ambiguously graduated grad students, ambiguously post-post-doc researchers, and ambiguous "visiting scholars."

It's one thing to be able to hang out in common spaces, especially during the day time, but where would would someone sleep for months? The article mentioned some sort of "temporary housing in the basement", but how does that work? Are there extra beds or even rooms unallocated? If so, why? Also, if he was squatting in rooms when people were away, he'd have to move every couple of days. Where would he keep his stuff? Could a person just live with a backpack full of personal effects for months???
Don't these buildings have security that checks common spaces for people after hours?

The whole thing sounds like an incredibly loosey-goosey system (which, among other things, suggests there's very little security for residents, if someone could occupy a building for months without any serious problem).

[mamselle]

Not unheard of at all.

Some schools have a secret sort of student support network for the homeless that can go undetected (or winked at) for years.

M.

[marshwiggle]

Not unheard of at all.

Some schools have a secret sort of student support network for the homeless that can go undetected (or winked at) for years.

M.

But in this case the impression seems to be that no-one else was in on it. He wasn't couch-surfing with a sympathetic friend; he had everyone thinking he had a place of his own. That's a lot bigger challenge.

[Hibush]

"He began to integrate himself into campus social life, creating a Tinder account."

Integration works differently in the social media age.

[apl68]

I recall stories like this from at least as far back as the 1980s.  When I was a grad student in the early 1990s, I was acquainted with an undergrad who claimed to be squatting on campus that very semester.  He would bed down in different otherwise unoccupied rooms around campus on different nights.  I don't recall any details--didn't actually hear that many of them in the first place.  The guy was a bit of a joker, so I'm not entirely sure he was on the level about his status.

A fellow grad student around that time lived a rather long drive off-campus.  He had a teaching assistant office in which he would sometimes roll out a sleeping bag to spend the evening so that he could avoid the long commute.  There are lots of nooks and crannies on a big R1 campus where a discreet squatter could spend a night.

[glowdart]

We had a parent pull this off for a couple of months — though nothing like that guy who moved into the dorm at Sarah Lawrence and then turn the whole thing into some kind of cult.

[Wahoo Redux]

Every dorm I was ever in had a student nodding off on a couch or snoozing in a chair in some communal space.  I suppose if the dorm is big enough you'd just walk right by someone sleeping in the basement as long as they looked like one of the student body, particularly if you are preoccupied with school or romance or whatever.  Likewise with the showers, restrooms, etc. 

[marshwiggle]

Every dorm I was ever in had a student nodding off on a couch or snoozing in a chair in some communal space.  I suppose if the dorm is big enough you'd just walk right by someone sleeping in the basement as long as they looked like one of the student body, particularly if you are preoccupied with school or romance or whatever.  Likewise with the showers, restrooms, etc.

Yeah, but not if it's the same guy on the same couch for weeks or months at a time. Unless he was constantly on the move, he would have stood out.