by Benjamin Israel
staff editor

A woman student reported that a man exposed himself to her in the hall on the second floor of Lucas Hall last week, according to campus police reports.

At 7:50 p.m. on Jan. 10, the student was sitting on the floor of Lucas Hall reading. "She looked up and there was a guy standing there," said Capt. James Smalley of the UM-St. Louis Police Department after reviewing police reports from the incident. "He had his jeans undone, he had his underwear pulled down so his penis and pubic hair were showing and he was stroking his penis in a downward motion."

Smalley said the woman went to classrooms looking for phones and asked passing students if they had cell phones, before using the red phone on the third floor to call campus police. Police searched the area, but couldn't find the man.

The student described the flasher as a white man in his late 30s or early 40s, about 6 feet tall and 200 pounds, with short brown hair, clean-shaven except for a possible mustache, Smalley said. She thought he was wearing a short brown or black waist-length leather jacket with blue jeans and possibly a hat. "She says if she saw the guy again, she would recognize him," Smalley said.

Smalley said that in 1996 and 1997, women reported 10 incidents of flashers on campus. Two men were arrested and convicted, one for seven of the incidents, the other for the other three, Smalley said. Neither man meets the description the woman gave in this incident, he said.

Smalley advises women who witness similar incidents to report them to campus police as quickly as possible.