“When instructor David Anderson ventured up to the men’s restroom on the fourth floor of Schrank Hall North to observe the progress on construction in the bathroom Thursday night, he found more than a half-finished bathroom. Three men dressed in all black, two wearing ski masks and a third with a mask in hand, were in the bathroom.”
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When instructor David Anderson ventured up to the men’s restroom on the fourth floor of Schrank Hall North to observe the progress on construction in the bathroom Thursday night, he found more than a half-finished bathroom.

Three men dressed in all black, two wearing ski masks and a third with a mask in hand, were in the bathroom.

When I opened the door there were three guys in there, Anderson said. When I opened the door he said ‘hello’ and I said ‘oh, hello,’ and then I shut the door and left.

He said it all happened so fast that he could not even comprehend what he was seeing. His only thought was to run to his students a floor below.

The only thing I thought about was getting back down to my classrooms in case there was going to be some trouble and shut my door, he said. It didn’t exactly scare me or anything because they did nothing threatening.

Anderson said he ran to a class across the hall from his and informed the instructor of what he had seen and asked her to dial police.

We couldn’t remember what the security telephone number was so she called 911 and got Akron, and then they referred us to campus police, he said. They responded, but by that time these guys had left.

Anderson said he continued to watch down the hall where the men were, and saw the men leave down the other end of the hall before police arrived. None of the men had their ski masks on when they left.

It was kind of strange when these guys were walking out, he said. It looked like they had handcuffs hanging down from the back of their pants or something.

Anderson said he was at the other end of the hall when he observed the men leave but he was too far away to clearly identify them.

Anderson said an officer informed him shortly after that they had not found anyone like he had described.

He said while he did not get a good look at the men, he would place them in the college student age range. He said he was so surprised by the whole thing that he just turned around and closed the door.

I thought well ‘I don’t want to be here,’ he said. I should have said something to my class because one girl had the police on her speed dial, but they were busy taking a test and I didn’t want to interrupt them or scare anybody either.

Student Ralph Fisler was in the classroom where Anderson ran after he stumbled across the men in the restroom.

He said his instructor quickly locked the door after Anderson told her what he saw and she dialed the police on her cell phone.

They (the police) reported back to us that they were causing no trouble and that they thought it might be ROTC, he said.

This information was not sufficient for Fisler and his classmates.

We were all puzzled at that explanation, he said. I personally don’t understand why they didn’t at least question those three guys.

University of Akron Police were not available for comment.

No one is a bigger civil libertarian than I am, Fisler said. I am very concerned about police abusing their authority and so forth, but when you’ve got three people dressed in all black, and two of them have ski masks and the third is about to put his on, that kind of looks like they’re going to do some bad things.

He said that the campus police were well within their rights to stop the three men and at least explain to them that it is not smart to be walking around at night in all black with ski masks on.

Fisler said he is concerned about more than his own safety since an Oct. 20 incident that involved a girl being groped by a man in a ski mask on campus.

We have one female student and most of us escorted her into the parking lot until we saw her get into her car and we’ll probably do that for the remainder of the class.

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” #1.1361611:3258815839.jpg:bathroom_md.jpg:The Schrank Hall bathroom where an instructor stumbled upon three students.:Melissa Dunfee”