When Sierra Long ’21 left the commuter lounge on Oct. 11, the Friday before fall break, she felt confident she had cleaned the space perfectly for the first student to return the next week.

That changed when she received a text at 9 p.m. on Oct. 11 with photos and a video of the lounge in disarray. Ottomans and side tables were stacked to the ceiling, leftover glow sticks from their Area 51 movie event were hung up in an outlet and on sprinklers, and a canvas that was painted by a commuter was missing. There was also a note left on the white board that said, “Sorry not sorry. Sincerely, C-man.”

“I felt disrespected because I treat this like my home,” said Long, vice president of Hawks in Flight, a student organization for commuter students. “It is my home because I am probably in this lounge more than I am at my own house.”

The incident is currently in the community standards process with peer review board hearings for the students involved happening sometime this week. 

“Based on any incident, we have a community standards process,” said Cary Anderson, Ed.D., vice president and associate provost of Student Life. “We don’t really discuss any details of that or the outcome. We are not able to do that.”

Marharyta Mashliakevich ’22, commuter-at-large senator for University Student Senate, approached The Hawk and said she was one of four students involved in the incident and wanted to tell “the second side of the incident.”

“I did it,” Mashliakevich said. “The intentions behind it was not to hurt anyone. I was going to publicly apologize before those people who actually got hurt and anyone who felt unsafe.”

Mashliakevich said she understands the irony of her current leadership position on Student Senate.

“I’m part of senate representing commuters, as ridiculous as that sounds,” Mashliakevich said. 

The commuter lounge, located in the back of The Perch, is a home away from home for many commuters at St. Joe’s.

“This is like our dorm room, so the fact that somebody came in here and did what they did to the lounge, with that note, it was really baffling,” said Makiah Stephens ’22, publicist of Hawks in Flight. “There is no reason why people should feel okay with destroying our space, especially since we worked so hard to make it the way it is now.”

Over the years, the lounge has been redecorated with a new paint job, framed photographs, furniture reupholstered in denim and a painted canvas.

“It is something we have an emotional attachment to,” Long said. “One of our other commuters painted the canvas and a few of us cut some pictures out of a magazine that represented us as commuters, how we felt as commuters, our experience as commuters here at St. Joe’s or how we felt in the lounge.”

Fatmata Sakho ’21, president of Hawks in Flight, said this isn’t the first time the commuters’ space has been violated. Things have been stolen from the lounge, clubs have taken furniture out of the lounge without asking and commuter students have been asked to leave the space when there are events in The Perch, according to Sakho.

“People assume the commuter lounge is a part of The Perch, and it’s not,” Sakho said. “People come through here and do whatever they want in here, and they don’t realize that people actually utilize this space. We don’t have anywhere else where we belong on campus.”

Nancy Komada, Ph.D., director of the Office of Student Transitions, whose office is in the lounge, was instrumental in securing the space for the commuters.

“They do feel like outcasts,” Komada said. “I think it is good they have this place here. We talk it up at orientation that this is their space. They feel like this is their space.”

Sakho said she has been touched by the support the commuters have received from the St. Joe’s community through social media.

“I’m glad it reached the SJU community, and it made me realize there are a lot of people on this campus who their perception is a little skewed for me,” Sakho said. “I’ve always seen residence students as one way and commuter students another way. After this incident, it showed me that people are good people no matter who they are, and if they do want to help out, they will help out.”