Acorn

Justin Obuch may have left Drew almost six years ago, but it appears that he does not want to be forgotten. Obuch allegedly knocked on a Drew student's door a little before 5 a.m. on Saturday. According to the student, Obuch claimed to be working as an undercover reporter. Chief of Public Safety Tom Evans claims Obuch is something else -- a trespasser.

In a campuswide e-mail sent yesterday morning, Evans announced that Public Safety had identified the alleged trespasser as Obuch, a former Drew student. According to Evans, Sgt. Jerry Lecomte and Capt. Harry Garlick recognized Obuch from the description of the alleged trespasser. "I sent an e-mail [yesterday] to an address that we believe is Obuch's notifying him that he is not welcome on campus," Evans said in an interview. "We're not sure where he lives -- we have several different home addresses for him." The University attorney will send written trespassing notices to each of those addresses, according to Evans. Obuch has not been arrested, and no formal charges have been brought against him.

"We're at the time of the year where students are worrying about finals and the end of the year, and it becomes an issue of 'Do we want to involve [the student witnesses] in a court case?' I'm not sure if it would be worth it."

If the University does decide to file charges, the University attorney will decide whether to pursue the case in criminal or civil court. There are "several possible charges" that the University could bring against Obuch, according to Evans, including trespassing and breaking and entering.

Evans believes that Saturday's incident was not the first time Obuch allegedly trespassed on campus.

"Over the last couple of weeks, several students have complained about hearing banging on their doors and windows early in the morning," Evans said. In each case, the individual responsible ran away before he could be identified. Evans believes that Obuch was responsible for those incidents.

However, Saturday's incident was different. The student, who Evans said was with several friends in his room, answered the door and stood face-to-face with the individual who knocked. According to the student, the individual claimed to be a reporter doing a story for The Madison Eagle on the security of college residence halls, and that they shouldn't say anything about the encounter, as the article would appear within the next few weeks.

Evans expressed his belief that the student may have misheard the alleged trespasser. "We've also heard rumors that he identified himself as an undercover police officer," Evans said.

The student filed a report with Public Safety that day. Evans contacted the Eagle, Madison's weekly newspaper, which confirmed that no such story was in the works. Calls to Eagle Managing Editor Gary Herzog yesterday were not returned.

Evans sent out a campus wide e-mail on Monday to seek out information on the suspect, described as being "in his early 20's, 5'10" [and] weighing about 180 lbs ... [with] a series of piercings in his right ear, approximately eight in number." The e-mail mistakenly listed Monday as the day of the incident. After Lecomte and Garlick identified the suspect as Obuch, a second e-mail was sent to the campus yesterday.

Obuch was a member of the Class of 2003 briefly in 1999, but withdrew before the end of his first semester, according to Evans, who did not speculate on Obuch's motives for returning to campus. "Some people are just kind of immature," Evans said. "I don't know what was in his heart."

"If anybody sees him on campus, report him to us and we will surely charge him," Evans said.

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