Peepers using public property

Correction: A previous version of this article misidentified the victim. The student wished to remain anonymous because of the sensitive nature of the crime.

By the time the student could scoop up her belongings and find help, the tears were already coming.

A bizarre reflection in the window had stolen her attention from the pile of books on her desk that afternoon at Young Research Library.

Confused by the shape she saw reflected in the glass, she looked around and then, on a whim, looked under the table.

“As I looked under the table there was a man on all fours looking up my skirt. The moving reflection was this guy’s head. I was so freaked out, all I could think about was needing to get away,” said the student, who wished to remain anonymous because of the sensitive nature of the crime.

The student learned firsthand what it means to attend a public institution whose facilities are, by law, open to anyone who wanders in ““ a fact that students who will spend most of their 10th and finals weeks in the libraries would do well to remember.

“Illegal or openly disruptive behavior is prohibited, but the general policy is that this is a public university and all of the different libraries are open to the public,” said Susan Parker, deputy university librarian.

There are several reasons that a library employee or campus security officer might ask a patron to leave the library, but simply being “an unsavory character” is not one of them, Parker said.

And the libraries see their share of unsavory characters on an almost daily basis.

Yvette Flores, a first-year undeclared student who started working at Powell Library this quarter, has already had to deal with complaints of suspicious activity while on the job.

“One day, a girl came up to me and asked for a (Community Service Officer) because there was a man taking pictures of her legs,” Flores said. “She was in a study room, and this guy had a camera and was just taking pictures of her legs.”

Matt Ellis, manager of the Community Service Officer program, said that these invasions of privacy are not uncommon at the UCLA libraries.

“You’ve got peepers, guys with mirrors on their shoes, and these days you have people with video cameras walking around. We get all sorts of funky stuff,” Ellis said.

Any of the students who work at YRL can easily describe the parade of characters, the most troublesome of which for student supervisor Monica Sandoval is simply referred to as “Porn Guy.”

From his chosen position on the third floor, Porn Guy exudes an air of confidence as he sits behind a desk with books and papers stacked on each side of his computer. He is tall, middle-aged, and is, according to several library employees, belligerent about his right to look at pornography.

“He just started yelling at me one day, claiming that we were being too loud. I guess it comes with the territory,” Sandoval said.

Because the computers in YRL do not require a BruinOnline ID, several employees and students have noted the frequency of patrons accessing pornographic materials on the library computers.

“I have seen people looking at porn on the first floor of YRL, and they weren’t doing it in some random back corner. They were doing it right at the front, in plain view,” said Hunter Smith, a second-year undeclared student.

The patron known as Porn Guy is a source of much anxiety for library employees, who receive repeated complaints that they can do very little about.

No matter how uncomfortable the situation might be for library employees or patrons, there is neither a law nor a university policy that prohibits accessing pornography on a public computer on campus.

“The law says it’s perfectly legal to view pornography, so if people are viewing it in the library, that is their legal right,” Parker said.

The only exception to this rule is child pornography, which is illegal and would be grounds for arrest.

Initially unaware of this policy, Nick Rowe, a former student employee at YRL, responded to a complaint about a man viewing pornography with swift action that turned out to be against library policy.

“I got a complaint from a woman who was really freaked out about what this man was looking at, so I went to go deal with the situation immediately,” Rowe said. “I tapped the guy on the shoulder and told him he needed to leave.”

The man eventually did leave, but Rowe was later approached by his supervisor and reprimanded.

“Apparently, there’s no rule about that, so I was going outside of my job and I shouldn’t have actually done it. But it was the heat of the moment and I wasn’t going to let him keep creeping people out,” Rowe said.

But when the line between unpleasant behavior and threatening behavior becomes difficult to determine, Nancy Greenstein, the director of police community services for university police, said that UCPD should be able to help.

“It’s our job to check out suspicious circumstances. We appreciate being called so we are able to check out the situation,” Greenstein said.

Ellis agreed that even minor situations can and should be reported, to allow UCPD to establish a history of who is in the library and which patrons are constantly causing problems.

“We would like to encourage people to report even minor incidents,” Ellis said. “What may end up being a minor incident in some cases, at some point may become more serious.”

Greenstein also suggested using the evening van services and the escort program run by campus security when studying on campus late at night.

“At most of the libraries, we have the CSOs and they are our eyes and ears,” Greenstein said.

It was a CSO that answered the student in the library’s call for help after she discovered that her privacy was being violated.

“I told the people at the desk that there was an emergency and they needed to call security. I was waiting there for 15 minutes, extremely distraught. I know he was still in the building, but when the CSO officer came we basically just had a conversation about it,” she said.

“That guy was successful because he got away scot-free,” the student said.