Crime On Upswing at NYU as Students Voice Concern About Stalkers

By:  Dean Weiner

Even the trendy West Village is not exempt from the spike in crime over the past months.

Students at New York University are on alert as a series of weird intruders have made it into the safe doors of this prestigious school.

In an exclusive New York Post report, Matthew Sedacca writes, “On Nov. 20, an intruder jumped a turnstile in front of a guard and trailed 20-year-old junior Khafira Freeman, who unsuccessfully tried to hide from the stalker in the building’s laundry room before fleeing to her own room.”

“Now I’m in this small group of so-to-say victims,” Freeman told The Post, adding that she began therapy following her terrifying encounter. “It’s like, okay, how many more before something [serious] happens?”

There have been four recorded instances of trespassing in the NYU dorms in November alone. Students are required to tap an ID on turnstiles to enter their residence halls or can have their IDs scanned by a guard and show their Covid-compliance pass to be let through. WSN noted that in one case, a trespasser may have entered the building through a loading dock.

“I almost feel safer not living in a dorm,” said Ishi Gupta, a 21-year-old senior who now lives in an off-campus apartment to The New York Post. “NYU students are paying so much tuition and the dorms are so expensive, and to not feel safe in them is kind of unacceptable.”

Another terrified student told The New York Post, “I wish NYU would give us more of a protocol to follow if people break in,” similar to how they have safety procedures in case of fires, said freshman Alexis Bardy, 18. She said she was “moderately scared” in October when an outsider managed to follow her and her roommate to their floor.

NYU spokesman John Beckman responded in a state to The New York Post that university president Andrew Hamilton has ordered a review of residence hall security protocol in light of the recent rash of Trespassers”

A local conservative activist who lives in the village near NYU told TJV, “look, NYU breeds the type of people that love bail reform and emptying out the jails, I bet 99% of those NYC students who voted went for the most woke candidates possible, this is what you call a teachable moment”.

These are our students’ homes, and our aim is for students to feel safe and secure in them,” he said.

According to its Wikipedia page, New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then-Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin. n 1832, the non-denominational all-male institution began its first classes near Hall based on a curriculum focused on a secular education. The university moved in 1833 and has maintained its main campus in Greenwich Village surrounding Washington Square Park.

Since then, the university has added an engineering school in Brooklyn’s MetroTech Center and graduate schools throughout Manhattan. NYU has become the largest private university in the United States by enrollment, with a total of 51,848 enrolled students, including 26,733 undergraduate students and 25,115 graduate students, in 2019. NYU also receives the most applications of any private institution in the United States and admission is considered highly selective.