A big part of living on campus is knowing that school owned housing gives the university the ability to look through student rooms. Over breaks, residence life staff routinely completes health and safety checks to ensure that students are complying with the student handbook rules and regulations. For the fraternity houses, these routine checks elicited a second check.

According to Kim Lammers, director of residence life, upon initial checks, the fraternity houses seemed to show an uptick in what Lammers considered stolen property from both the city and the university as well as liquor bottles. Residence Life issued a warning to the men in the fraternity houses giving them a chance to turn in any items that might appear to be stolen before a second check would be completed to gather anything that appeared to be stolen.

“The first time through [the rooms], we didn’t take any [items],” Lammers said. “We met with the fraternities and told them “this is a policy violation.” We wanted to let them know that we didn’t feel it matched with our mission and values at the university, and I don’t feel it matches with the fraternities missions or values to have any [stolen property] in their rooms.”

The fraternities complied and turned items in, but there was concern amongst some fraternity men about items that were willed or handed-down to them from past members over a number of years.

The statute of limitations on stolen items, listed in section 2901.13 of the Ohio Revised Code, states that receiving stolen property is only punishable for one or three years after it is received. However, Lammers explained that the university has no way of determining when and if something was stolen and by whom and so any property that might be questionable should, in her opinion, be taken home.

“I said if you want to appeal we can discuss it and see if we can give it back to you in some way,” Lammers said. “Then we sent them an email again and said if anything was still in the houses that could be considered stolen it would be confiscated and go through conduct.”

So far Lammers has not received any appeals and notes that soon the items the university has taken will be returned to the city of Ashland and to the university.

Hunter Music, a member of Phi Kappa Psi, explained that documented photos of items that were “assumed to be stolen” were given to them by Residence Life to help them determine what to turn in or remove from the house. However, some items that Music believes were not photographed were confiscated the second time around.

“They confiscated items that were not photographed and we were just like ‘we complied to everything,’” said Music. “We got our student conduct [letter], [which said] we weren’t complying to the university policy, we were disobeying university officials, and we were harboring stolen property. None of which, we were doing.”

One of the biggest issues for Phi Kappa Psi brothers were signs with the No. 3, which were listed as “gas station signs” when confiscated that hold significance to the chapter. Music said that at least eight brothers were documented for having those signs, which he noted did not have any logo or means of identification to indicate they were stolen or any police reports filed that would indicate they were stolen.

“We were obviously going to go through the typical university standard of guilty until proven innocent and so I met with Hannah Clayborne and expressed all these issues, expressed the unprofessionalism that is the Residence Life office and the miscommunication that occurred from right hand to left hand,” Music said.

Lammers would not comment on this specific issue, but according to Music before the hearing was held, the charges were dropped due to an issue of Residence Life assuming items were stolen without concrete proof and therefore having no right to confiscate the property.

“They’re lacking communication with each other and what’s going is clearly not there,” said Music. “They don’t know what they’re doing. Jonathan Locust had no idea what was going on. And they said they saw an uptick [in stolen items] but we have no idea where these items have come from because they have been passed down since forever. There’s [scroll] numbers in the 5-hundreds and we’re in the 8-hundreds now and that’s like nineties guys. So there hasn’t really been an uptick, it’s the same items.”

Another issue with these checks that was experienced specifically by members of Tau Kappa Epsilon were the times the intial health and safety checks were done.

In the fraternity houses where no official RA is stationed, students typically leave their slips on their doors to show that they have left the room and that it is ready to be checked. However, for spring break, members of Tau Kappa Epsilon and Phi Kappa Psi noted they did not receive the slips.

According to Lammers, residence life will typically send out emails that have a checklist along with slips to the students living in fraternity circle but even without such a notification, because the student handbook lists that there will be health and safety checks during those breaks, they are not required to remind students about them.

For spring break this year, students had to be out of their rooms no later than 10 A.M. Saturday, March 5, after which, spring break health and safety checks would be completed.

According to Housing Coordinator Sarah Toby and confirmed by Lammers, no form of Health and Saftey check was completed until after the 10 A.M. deadline. According to Toby the only person doing rounds in the TKE house that night was Bryan Fliger.

Fliger no longer works at Ashland University and sent out an email to his residents Feb. 26 to explain that he was relocating to Florida with March 5 being the first day of his journey to Florida.

“We went through [the fraternity houses] Saturday morning. Me and [Jessica Reagan] went though around noon or 11 Saturday morning , so [March 5],” Toby said.

However, a few members of Tau Kappa Epsilon noted that Toby and Reagan who also works for the Residence life office, were completing health and safety checks around dinner time Friday, March 4.

Dillon McClain was out in the hallway after class Friday, getting a trash bag to clean up his cluttered room before break when he saw Residence Life going through rooms down the hall.

“I saw Jessica Reagan and Sarah Toby holding a bag with bottles rattling in it that they had taken out of someone’s room,” said McClain. “I figured someone was in trouble so I let some of my brothers know. They went through every room including mine. They didn’t poke around a lot in my room but just kind of glanced around the room to see if there was anything that shouldn’t have been. I think because I was there they didn’t want to spend too much time.”

One member who wished to remain anonymous for fear of getting in to further trouble received a write-up from Toby and Reagan that night for an alcohol related issue.

“I have proof because I have the write up slip signed by Sarah Toby and Jessica Reagan,” said the student. “I asked Sarah what gives, like aren’t you supposed to let us know 24 hours in advance. She was like ‘oh yeah I noticed my intern had the [checkout slips] in her box and never distributed them but we went ahead and did it anyways.’ It almost seemed like they weren’t doing a normal room check because they left the windows open but all they did was take the alcohol bottles out.”

Lammers and Toby both denied any checks done by Residence Life Friday night but Lammers said that Residence Life normally only checks a room early if they are aware that the students have already left.