When I was 19 and in college, the maintenance man in my dorm knocked on my door and said, "maintenance!" I answered, because, duh, it's the maintenance people. He asked me on a date.
I didn't realize at the time that the 20-something maintenance man in my dorm using his position to get into my dorm and ask me on a date was inappropriate because I was newly 19 and it was apparently my first day on the planet.
I declined. I said I was already seeing someone. It wasn't necessarily true but I also didn't feel super comfortable and my roommate was gone.
I mentioned it to my RA later that night and she was floored. She was older than me, a junior, and she hated the maintenance man. She had known him for longer and I guess he had a bit of a prowly reputation. She made me sit in her room and called campus security. They filled a report, I never saw him again.
The wild part to me now isn't really what he did but what the school did. I remember a few months later getting an email from some higher up in the college. They had scheduled an appointment with me across town, on a Saturday morning.
I remember trekking across town, alone, because I was a freshman and didn't have friends yet. I was a bit scared, I didn't know why they wanted to see me. They brought me into a little room, a man and a woman. Three chairs, clipboards.
They asked about the maintenance man and proceeded to suggest that I had led him on. Again, at the time, I didn't realize how bizarre the suggestion was that it was somehow my fault that this guy had a reputation for preying on the freshman girls in the building he worked in or that he had used his position to get into my room.
It's been years of me being uncomfortable about the whole situation and I've just finally realized, no, I didn't contribute to him abusing his position. He was always just the kind of guy who would do that. He had likely done it to others but I was over 18 and most of my dorm wasn't yet over 18.
I eventually learned they kept him on as staff and moved him to a different location of the school where he wasn't working in the dorms. It's still bewildering to me that, from whatever he told them as defense, they sat me down to suggest I was too friendly and thus the behavior was warranted. He maintained his job and I was warned not to be too kind or friendly.
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