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MIT student charged wth raping BU student in her dorm room last fall
By adamg on Tue, 05/10/2016 - 3:21pm
An MIT student wandering around a BU dorm overnight last October entered one sleeping woman's dorm room and raped her, Suffolk County prosecutors charge.
Samson Donick, 20, of Tiburon, CA, faces arraignment in Suffolk Superior Court tomorrow on charges of aggravated rape, breaking and entering at night with the intent to commit a felony, burglary and indecent assault and battery, following his indictment by a Suffolk County grand jury, the Suffolk County District Attorney's office reports.
According to the DA's office, Sonick and three other men - none BU students - were signed into a BU dorm around 2 a.m. on Oct. 18 by two female BU students.
At approximately 2:30 am, Donick and one of the males left the suite in search of a particular female student known to the second male. For approximately 30 minutes, Donick and the second male entered about 10 different dorm rooms on four different floors while looking for her.
During that time, prosecutors say, the 20-year-old victim – who did not know Donick or the second male – awoke to find Donick in her room sexually assaulting her. She confronted him and screamed, and he fled the scene.
The victim disclosed the assault to friends and Boston University Police. In the meantime, the college issued a public safety alert regarding the incident and numerous students soon began reporting that two unknown college-age males had entered their dorm rooms during the time in question.
Boston University Police later recovered surveillance camera footage depicting these two men in a building stairwell and ultimately retrieving their identification at the front desk where they had been signed in. They were identified and the second male gave a statement indicating that he and Donick had entered several suites and bedrooms during the time in question, including one bedroom in which Donick had stayed for a short time.
Innocent, etc.
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Comments
Not Too Bright — I Think He Probably Dropped Out
His name appears on a 2014-15 MIT basketball team, but no mention of him after his freshman year. He's not in the MIT directory now, so I'm guessing he funked out.
Suspended!
"Samson Donick, 20, formerly of Boston and now a resident of Tiburon, California, was indicted Tuesday on charges of aggravated rape, breaking and entering at night with the intent to commit a felony, burglary and indecent assault and battery.
Donick, who was suspended from MIT during the investigation, is expected to be arraigned Wednesday in Suffolk Superior Court."
http://www.wcvb.com/news/man-accused-of-raping-student-in-bu-dorm/39473128
He just caused a big setback
He just caused a big setback in MIT students' fight against strict dorm security policies.
http://tech.mit.edu/V136/N11/security.html
I read the description of
I read the description of events and am completely confused.
They randomly entered a bunch
They randomly entered a bunch of dorm rooms "looking" for a female student they knew...
"Donick and the second man entered about 10 different dorm rooms on four different floors "
I think they used the excuse of "looking" for that student to wander around.
They ended up assaulting a random female that they did not know.
Only 1
Only 1 of the two has been charged with assault.
Entered 10 rooms? Back in my
Entered 10 rooms? Back in my day, the doors locked when you closed them whether you liked it or not, unless it was the Myles mini doors which people left unlocked 24/7 out of convenience.
I wonder what dorm this was in
Student Village II, according to the Globe
.
And the BU student who signed these guys in?
I would hope that residents are held responsible for the behavior of their guests...
Stern lecture at most
The woman who signed the guy in likely had no idea that was what he was planning on doing.
Alternatively, It's possible she herself was pressured by the guy. According to the story one of the women left after they had gotten in and that women was the person the guys where initially looking for. If this women was the same one who let them in she might have left in fear of the same thing happening to herself.
Security
I don't see anything about security having been called. Again, if it was the same woman, she should be responsible for her guests. If they had gotten out of control (it does happen) she should have at least alerted security. If she simply abandoned them while still in the building, there should be some consequences for her. I'd be amazed if this isn't made clear to residents of student housing.
Or they could go back to the
Or they could go back to the old guest policy, which was designed to protect students from just this sort of thing.
Yup
When I was at BU I used to get into arguments with my friends over it. They thought that guest policy was "sooo not fair!" I would list all of their street smart failures as evidence as to why I did not want them responsible for my safety.
A lot of kids do not bring their street smarts to college. A lot of them haven't developed any yet. The other students' safety shouldn't rest in the hands of the Weakest Link of 1000, who's never lived in a house with a locked door in his/her life.
Bringing street smarts to college:
This:
is the whole problem. A lot of kids who first enter college are totally lacking in street smarts to begin with, because their parents obviously never bothered to instill street-smarts into them to begin with, or to make them aware, if one gets the drift.
That being said, I'm more than grateful that I didn't go to college until I was considerably older.
Student Guards / Desk Monitors?
When I was at BU in the early 90s, either BU security or Police, not students, signed people in and out of the larger dorms (Myles Standish and Warren Towers) - sure there were ways to get around it ike going into the dining hall (Myles) and going to hang out with a friend until you wanted to leave, but otherwise you gave your ID and were signed in. There were no signs at a desk signing you in, and in many cases they called up to see if the person was in their room to prevent such a thing. Granted, some of the overnight rules were puritanical, but still.
So now it is just what, an upper classman texting on her phone whilst people get let in? Come on, this is what people are paying for?
Around the same time (mid 90s) at BC dorms, there were a bunch of on campus rapes reported, and they followed that lax system of a student at the desk asking you to sign in - no id, no nothing - we went in to see my friend's sister, both of us were post college, but we could have just wandered off the street (my friend was 25 at the time with a full beard and looked 30)
To be clear, this is not victim blaming - I hold the university responsible for their weak policy, the person who let these crooks in, and what I presume to be a bunch of whiny entitled kids who cried that the guest policies were unfair and outdated. This is why, as my son is starting to look at colleges, I am scrutinizing things like this.
I went to both Northeastern for a year, and to BU several years
later, and the old rules were the most protective of other dorm residents and their legitimate guests.
Not only is it better for people to lock the doors to their rooms, whether they/re there or not, but one was also able to escort their guest(s) to the front door of the dorm after they were done visiting. During my first year at B. U., I heard of a rather grisly incident from a resident assistant in my dorm that one woman who lived in the dorm failed to escort her male guest out to the front entrance/exit of the dorm, leaving him free to wander around however he liked. He entered the room of a girl he didn't know, and she came just a hair or two from being raped by the other dorm resident's guest. Not funny.. at all! Fortunately, however, the young woman whose dorm room that the errant guest had deliberately wandered into used her wits...and managed to get the offender out of there, before anything bad happened. This is yet another reason why it's better to lock one's dorm room door, whether they're there or not.
Ya know, there's a song about that
Consider the lines from "Dirty Water:"
They refer specifically to a certain university on the Boston bank of the Charles that used to lock the doors to the women's dorms at midnight.
Ahhhhh, yes!
I remember that song! It's a favorite mid-1960's song. Those 1960's songs (many of them) can't be beat!
BU's old policy
prohibited anyone from being signed in after midnight. Basically, this meant that anyone making "new friends" out at parties or bars couldn't bring those new friends into the dorm, which protected their more responsible classmates from the bad decisions of the irresponsible.
I did disagree with how strict BU's policy was towards other BU undergraduates who didn't live in the dorm, or people who had legitimate planned-ahead guests, but with regards to impromptu gatherings of random sketchballs, it was fully on point.
google this dude's name
plenty of hits with pics. He is/was a basketball player @ MIT.
These guys are idiots and
These guys are idiots and justice should be served, etc.
But do people seriously not lock their doors when they go to sleep?
I always locked the door to my dorm room when I was asleep or not there. There were a few occasions when drunk people tried to get in because they mistook it for their own room. Is this not just common sense?
Good points, Charlie.
Your points make great, good sense, Charlie.
When I, too, lived in dorms and independent apartments while in college, and even beyond, and presently,
I've always locked my door(s) whether I'm home or not, and when I was asleep, all of which I still do now, even though I lived in a condominium that I've owned outright for roughly 28 years.
Back in the early 1970's, when I attended Northeastern University for a year and lived in a dorm, there was one woman in our dorm who had a ludicrously stupid habit of leaving the key to her room dangling in the lock of her door, when she was home, and, even at night, when she went to sleep.
One day, however (you guessed it!), somebody came along and stole the key to this woman's room, with an obvious intention to use it. The woman came home from her classes one afternoon to find that her room had been ransacked, and a number of things stolen, including a bathing suit, money, and a bunch of other stuff. Friends had to room-sit for her when she attended classes or whatever, until she got the lock to her room changed. Hopefully, she learned her lesson and never left her room key dangling in her lock again.