By Dan FletcherThe Daily Northwestern
A Medill senior was arrested Monday morning in the McCormick Tribune Center by University Police for a failure to appear in court, said Sgt. Steven Stoeckl of UP.
Nekoro Gomes said he fell asleep Sunday night on the third floor of the Tribune Center, where much of the Integrated Marketing Communications department is located, while working on a journalism project.
Hannelore Zydel, a program assistant for IMC, said she called police when she found him asleep Monday morning.
“Somebody was sleeping on a bench, and I don’t intend to deal with it,” Zydel said. “There shouldn’t be people sleeping here, and that’s all there is to it.”
After UP officers arrived Monday morning and asked his identity, they arrested him on the outstanding warrant, Stoeckl said.
Gomes was first arrested March 22 by the UP for possessing 10 to 30 grams of marijuana, said Helen Robinson, of the office of the Criminal Clerk of Court. After completing a drug education program in the summer, Gomes was ordered to return to court on Oct. 27.
When he missed the scheduled appointment a warrant was issued for his arrest, she said.
After Gomes’ Monday hearing the charges were vacated and he was released, Robinson said.
Gomes said he decided, after consulting his father, that he would not comment on the court case.
He said he was told it was IMC policy not to allow students to sleep on the third floor.
“I don’t blame (Zydel) at all,” Gomes said.
Medill Prof. Susan Mango Curtis said Gomes was working in the building to make up a project for her Print Media Design class, which he took last spring.
“Students fall asleep all the time,” Curtis said. “One day I came in and students in the lab were sleeping on desks and curled up with pillows underneath the desks.”
Curtis said she assigned Gomes more tasks for his project on Friday and that he spent much of the weekend working on it. IMC has little familiarity with undergraduate journalism students, and this probably contributed to the issue, she said.
“They wouldn’t know him as a student because they would have never seen him before,” Curtis said.
Prof. Richard Roth, senior associate dean for Medill, said there is no rule that specifically forbids students from sleeping in the building.
“There’s no policy,” he said. “The buildings are not dormitories, but if students want to be in the building working, more power to them.”
Roth said the labs lock at 5 p.m., but the rooms have keypads so students can enter with a code.
“The people who need to be in there can get in there,” he said.
Doors on the building lock at 10 p.m. on Sunday nights, Roth said, but students who are already inside the building do not have to leave.
“There’s no one inside to usher students out,” he said.
Gomes said that had he remained on the second floor, the whole issue may have been avoided.
“It would be in Medill’s interest to reconsider better policies about being in the building overnight because it is a reality that students will be there working,” Gomes said.
Reach Dan Fletcher at [email protected].
