Signs in Tilton windows upset Lewis residents

Several female residents of Lewis Hall submitted a harassment complaint to the Tufts University Police Department (TUPD) on Sept. 12 after viewing bright cardboard signs reading "We've seen you naked" posted in the windows of the adjacent Tilton Hall.

A group of Tilton residents was gathered in the common room of the building's third floor when they noticed that a female resident of Lewis Hall was changing without closing her shade, freshman Jackie Silva said. According to Silva, the Lewis Hall female was naked for 25 minutes.

"I told some other people on the floor about it, and it became the joke of the floor," Silva said. "We couldn't believe that these girls would just walk around naked, without closing their shades. I always close my shade when I change."

As knowledge of the naked Lewis girls spread throughout the floor, more Tilton residents began to take notice and joke about the phenomenon. Finally, freshman Stower Beals decided to take action to stop the nudity.

"I had spray paint, and all these huge pieces of cardboard, so I figured I may as well use them," Beals said. The group of third-floor Tilton residents said that their decision to paint and put up the signs was due to "a combination of boredom and A.D.D."

The students placed the signs in four windows stretching across Tilton Hall, but the reaction the residents got was not what they expected. Some upset Lewis Hall residents called the Police in tears to complain that the large signs were a form of sexual harassment.

The TUPD immediately headed over to Tilton to investigate. When officers arrived, they began pounding on doors and yelling at the residents, taking down student identification numbers and threatening to report those involved to the Dean of Students, the Tilton Hall residents said.

A TUPD officer came into Beals' room and looked behind his shade. He then made him come out into the hallway with him.

"He kept asking us, 'If your sister and mother lived over there, would you treat them the way you're treating those girls?' And I was just like, 'My sister and mother would find it funny,'" Beals said.

Third floor residents were stunned at the police's reaction to what they believed to be a "small joke," Beals said.

"When we got in trouble, it was the most shocking thing," one resident said.

"Those signs were never meant to be crude, they were never meant to be harassment," Downer said. He said Tilton's proctor knew about the signs before they went up.

TUPD did not wish to comment on the incident but said the case is under investigation. In Lewis Hall, flyers are now posted on bathroom doors warning girls to close their shades when they change.

One female Lewis resident reported that she first noticed the signs upon returning from class one day. "You couldn't miss them" she said. "There were these huge neon signs just screaming at me. I didn't know who they were talking about, everyone pretty much thought it was them [who had been seen naked]."

When asked how she felt about the issue, and what she was going to do to take action. "We [the girls on the Tilton side of Lewis] were going to get them back," she said.