Two reports of sexual misconduct have been made after a tweet thread involving a UI student went viral Saturday afternoon.

On Saturday morning Jadie Anderson, a student at the University of Iowa, tweeted a direct message she had received from a male student attempting to flirt with her. While it is typically not unusual for college guys to "slide into the DMs", this specific message was different as it was not only received by Anderson, but by hundreds of other girls as well; myself included.

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Last fall was when I received my first message from my cyberstalker. The message (exactly the same as the one shown above) seemed a little strange, but as a girl at a new University, I didn't really think anything of it so I bantered back and forth with him for a while. Within the first 24-hours of talking with this guy, he had added me on all of my other social media platforms. This was my second red flag. It's one thing to ask for my Snapchat and Instagram, but to find them on your own and add me to them all on the very first day I talk to you....no bueno. My third red flag came about after I was spammed with "hey" and "are you ignoring me" while I was off my phone for a while because of work. At this point, I was very uneasy about the situation. In an attempt for this guy to leave me alone on his own, I had a guy friend of mine message the stalker saying that he was my boyfriend and he needed to leave me alone. I then proceeded to block him on all of the sites he had friended/followed me on.

Days later ALL of my closest friends had received messages from the same guy. At the time, I was convinced that he was doing this strictly to get to me and I was terrified. They all blocked him and after that, it wasn't a huge issue. A few weeks later I ran into him in person for the first time and immediately ran out. I remember feeling so scared...and then feeling dumb for feeling scared. "It's just a dumb college guy, why are you psyching yourself out?" I never reported my cyberstalker because truthfully, I didn't even classify him as that until this whole thing surfaced and I realized just how serious this situation was. We never think things like this will happen to us until they do.

When I saw Jadie's tweet on Monday I was completely shocked and disgusted by the multitude of women who had come forward. As of today, over 1,400 people have retweeted in agreement that they too have been hit on and some even assaulted by this cyberstalker.

TV-9 interviewed me about the situation. You can see the video HERE.

While social media is a great tool for sharing and spreading the word on cases like this, unfortunately, these tweets do not constitute as reports on their own. So I am encouraging women to please report your statements. I seriously wish I had done so sooner. This behavior is not acceptable anywhere, but especially on a college campus where we should all feel comfortable and safe in our surroundings.

If you would like to make make a report, please call these numbers and share your stories!
University of Iowa Dean’s Office: (319) 335-1162
Sexual Misconduct Line: (319) 335-6200

 

 

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