Entry of students' room causes controversy at Hill

The smoke has cleared, but it still reeks of controversy in Hill House. Students on a second floor suite of Hill are questioning the actions of three graduate fellows who accused two students of smoking marijuana in their rooms Sunday. And as a result, the three GFs will have to face questions from a senior staff disciplinary review board, according to Assistant Dean of Hill House Steve Feld. "Emotions are running fairly high," Feld said. "The behavior the students are relating to me [about the GFs] is not acceptable." College freshman Sarah Davies said she was studying with a friend Sunday night when three GFs knocked on her door. Although Davies gave the GFs permission to enter her room, they instead "stormed" in and told the students they heard an illegal activity was going on in there. Then, she said, they asked to see their PennCards. Davies added that third year Wharton and Engineering graduate student and GF, Prasad Veluchamy, did not say why he entered her room, but informed Davies that the police were on their way. She added that Veluchamy said she and her friend would have to take a breathalyzer test. Veluchamy said he was responding to reports from Lance Dunlop, a first-year Psychology graduate student and GF for Davies' suite, that there was marijuana smoke in the area of Davies' room. Veluchamy said he expected to find the students using drugs in the room, but was shocked with what he found instead. "They were both just sitting on beds with books in their hands," he said. However, Veluchamy, and other students in the suite, maintain that someone was smoking pot. "We treat it not with levity," Veluchamy said. "It affects other people in the community." But Davies said that she is very upset and angered by the way the situation was handled both during the incident and afterwards. "It got sort of out of hand," Davies said. "The three of them were out of control. That was the scariest part; the GFs didn't realize what they did was wrong. "Did anyone give us a chance to be innocent?" Davies asked. "Did we do something wrong? We got busted for something we didn't do." Veluchamy admitted that he went to the dorm room with the attitude of guilty until proven innocent, and that he trusted Dunlop's information. "I did not have any grounds to doubt Lance's veracity," Veluchamy said. "I have had four successful busts. I didn't occur to me that Lance was wrong." The students also complained that after a heated argument among the GFs and the two students, the GFs left, leaving the students to wait for the police to show up. Davies said she repeatedly asked Dunlop, her next door neighbor, when the police were coming, but he would not give her an answer. Veluchamy said he used the line about the police to try to coerce the students into telling the truth -- even though University Police were never contacted. "The motives beyond using such credible threats is to tell us they're smoking pot," Veluchamy said. "There were mistakes made and I'm sorry about them." Instead of answering her questions, Davies said Dunlop came back into her room and said, "Cut the bullshit Sara, you know you were smoking pot." Davies said she became furious with this accusation and promptly kicked Dunlop out of her room. "They took their little scheme too far," Davies said. "It was a complete violation. I want to make sure people realize the magnitude of it. They didn't feel like they had done anything wrong." On Tuesday night, Dunlop held a suite meeting to discuss the incident. But students said that the meeting became a screaming match between themselves and the GFs. On Wednesday night, Feld met with the students. "If we had to do it again, we wouldn't go into the room without knowing what the hell was going on," Veluchamy said. "I'm not abandoning any culpability on my part." Many students in the suite are still bitter, and said that the GFs had gone overboard in the handling of the ordeal. "We wanted to make sure this wouldn't happen again," College freshman and Hill House resident Gordon Gochenauer said. "They accused them of doing it first, rather than asking them." Engineering freshman Ernest Poon, also a resident of Hill House in Davies' suite, agreed. "It was totally unjustifiable and unreasonable," Poon said. Tammy Lefcourt, a doctoral student in mathematics, was one of the GFs involved and says she is sorry the anything ever happened. Lefcourt added that her role in the incident was minimal. "I definitely feel the women involved were at the short end of some stick," Lefcourt said. "But you have to take action in a way that seems the best course of action at the time," she added.

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