Yesterday Students for Concealed Carry held their annual conference in Washington D.C. One of the panels during the conference featured women who have been stalked unrelentingly by violent and dangerous men.
One of those panelists was Dartmouth Student Taylor Woolrich, who detailed her long battle against a man who began stalking her after she served him a cup of coffee at a shop she worked in. The man was 40 years older than her and wouldn't leave her alone.
"Eventually it all came to a climax when he attacked, well attempted to attack my then boyfriend in high school when I was 17-years-old and told him he should never speak to me again and threw hot coffee in his face. I got an emergency restraining order. When I returned to work the next morning, he was standing there and chased me back to my car. The restraining order was granted for a period of three years, this was August 2011. He was supposed to be out this month. He continued to contact me. He found me at Dartmouth, at my sorority, he found me at my family's new home that they moved to. He found me through LinkedIn, Facebook, everything. I tried to delete things, he still found me. He hired a private investigator. We don't know exactly where he gets his information, all I know is that when I returned home, after 18 months of not seeing this man, I got back to my parents' house at 1:30 a.m. flying in from Dartmouth and at 8:30 a.m. the next morning he was knocking on my front door," Woolrich detailed. "When he was arrested by the police, they found what they like to call a rape kit in the back of his car. It consisted of a sweatshirt, firewood, maps of the area, duct tape, a rope tied into a slip noose, hunting knives and various other items. He's in custody now, because after doing that obvious act of harassment, that became enough for them to press felony charges, felony stalking charges vs. just a simple restraining order violation. When they obtained a search warrant for his house, they realized he had also found my address at school, my parents' address, my mother's full-name, he had pictures of me and my fiance that he had scratched my fiance out of."
Today Woolrich's stalker is still in jail and there is a trial this month. In order to protect herself on campus at Dartmouth, Woolrich contacted campus security. She was told that she couldn't carry a concealed weapon on campus and needed to use security escorts when she felt unsafe. It wasn't long until Dartmouth's campus security saw Woolrich as a burden and annoyance.
"When I contacted Safety and Security at Dartmouth I explained the situation, they've known about the restraining order, they've known about everything and they were sympathetic and then whenever I asked them to obtain authorization on campus to carry a concealed weapon they told me no way," Woolich said. "No appeals process, no supervisor. The operator at Safety and Security at Dartmouth College told me that I could call for a security escort if I felt unsafe. I've done this and I got responses such as, 'You can't keep calling us all the time,' or 'You can only call after 9 p.m.' I'd like to say that my stalker doesn't really care what time of day it is. He doesn't care if it's light or dark or if I'm on the east coast or the west coast or out of the country. I have an out of control situation and I'm asking for my control back."
"Dartmouth thinks banning weapons will keep students safe, but a gun ban isn't going to stop him from attacking," she added. "At Dartmouth if a restraining order and law enforcement can't guarantee my safety, then I'm asking for the right to do so."
The entire video is worth your time.
Shame on Dartmouth for putting anti-gun political ideology above the safety and well being of their female students who have evidence of men wanting to do severe harm.
Editor's note: Sarah Jean Seman and Kara Jones contributed to this post.