An Alabama man is accused of posing as a student to live in Stanford University dorms for 10 months, officials told news outlets.
Campus police gave the man a “stay-away” letter and removed him from campus on Thursday, Oct. 27, university spokeswoman Dee Mostofi told McClatchy News.
Police had cited him in December 2021 but could not find him again to serve him with a letter ordering him to stay away from the California university, Mostofi said. Stay-away letters are a “a prerequisite to citing someone for trespass on campus.”
In the latest incident, he “posed as a Stanford sophomore from Birmingham, Ala. and lived in the basement for weeks” at a university residence hall, which had temporary rooms for student needs, The Stanford Daily reported.
He used his “persistence and ability to ingratiate himself with our student community” to evade university protocols forbidding non-students from living in the dorms, Mostofi said.
While Stanford authorities were aware the man had been seen on campus, the information was not distributed to all residence hall employees and supervisors.
“We will immediately undertake a review to ensure our procedures do not allow for this type of incident to happen again,” Mostofi said in a statement.
The man had even created an Instagram profile falsely identifying him as a Stanford student, The Stanford Daily said. The student newspaper said he was revealed as an impostor after a television set disappeared from a dorm basement.
More than 13,000 graduate and undergraduate students live in university-provided housing at the Palo Alto campus, according to Stanford’s website.
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