Stanford University confirmed Tuesday that a man had been illegally living on campus for nearly a year after posing as a student. The man has been identified as 20-year-old William Curry.
Since December 2021, the man was reported on campus several times. He was caught last month in the basement of a dorm after taking a television from the location.
Curry reportedly “socialized with the other residents” and was regularly let into dorms, according to the Stanford Daily.
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Reporters Cassidy Dalva and Theo Baker were tipped off by a fellow writer who lives in the University’s Crothers Hall.
“(We went there) armed with kind of the screenshots that I had gotten from that writer, which basically revealed through messages sent by an RA (Resident Assistant) in that slack, that there was a squatter who had been living in Crothers Hall in the basement for weeks,” reporter Cassidy Dalva said about a tip off.
Dalva said that many students who were interviewed said they were convinced that Curry was in fact a student.
“There were sources in our article that were talking about baking brownies and eating hem with this man,” Dalva said.
Stanford University is reviewing its safety procedures following the incident.
“He sometimes climbed through windows, he sometimes was able to take a student’s ID card, according to residents who lived with him last year,” reporter Theo Baker said. “He was getting let in a lot of the times by people who thought that either he was living there with them, or he was a friend of somebody living in the dorm.”
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Dee Mostofi, the external communications assistant vice president for the Northern California university, said that concerns have grown over gaps in protocols after Curry’s “persistence and ability to ingratiate himself with our student community.”
“We will immediately undertake a review to ensure our procedures do not allow for this type of incident to happen again,” she said.
According to Mostofi, school officials were unable to locate Curry until the most recent incident.