For the past seven years, and as recently as this September, a number of female Saint Louis University students have received suspicious e-mails from an unknown sender. The e-mails are addressed to their name and contain identical messages that attack the “modesty” of each recipient.

Sarah Klucker, director of the Office of Student Conduct, said that the Department of Public Safety has records of the old e-mails.

“This has been happening for the last seven years, the same message from the same person who is not a student, never has been; but [DPS] said it’s the exact same content, word for word, just a different woman who will get the e-mail,” Klucker said. ?

The e-mails claim to be written by a male named Keith Primmel.

Since the culprit is not using a SLU e-mail account, he cannot be traced by ITS; so there are no possible suspects.

“We don’t have information on who it is; ITS has an investigator looking into the matter.?One student actually responded but never got a response in return. It almost feels . like the person writing these e-mails doesn’t care if they get a response,” Klucker said.

There are a total of seven known recipients of the e-mail. Two recent victims received it on the same day at the end of September.

One former SLU student, who wished to remain anonymous, said that she was initially frightened after receiving the e-mail. Meanwhile, a sophomore student, who also requested anonymity, said that she was highly offended after she came to the conclusion that the e-mail was not a joke.

“If it is classified as ‘sexual harassment,’ then necessary actions should be taken to determine the identity and ensure that person receives the appropriate consequences,” she said.

As far as DPS and Klucker can tell, there are no patterns among the students receiving these e-mails besides gender; the victims represent a range of ages and majors and come from a number of different cities.

Klucker believes that the culprit is finding contact information on the SLU website’s People Finder application.

As a measure of safety, she suggests that the victims of these messages take themselves off of People Finder.

Director of Graduate Studies for the Department of Communications and Interim Director of Women’s Studies Paaige Turner, Ph.D., disagreed.

“I think [removing yourself from People Finder] is a bad idea. By doing this, these young women make themselves unavailable to the world-they’re limiting themselves and their relationships,” Turner said.

Turner believes that it is instances such as this that create the “culture of fear” that the women of today live in.

Although all of the answers have yet to be found regarding the e-mails, Klucker said that it is important to report any instances of threat.

“I don’t want students to be unnecessarily alarmed or panicked about this … but they do need to be aware of protecting their privacy,” Klucker said.