Calling a room and hanging up as soon as the phone is answered.

Making an off-color joke in the hallway.

Leaving a vulgar note on a door.

These may seem like harmless pranks to some students living in the residence halls, but to other students and the Department of Public Safety, they could constitute harassment.

Ginger Wilson, Storms Hall director and graduate student in educational leadership and policy studies, said there are many incidents of harassment in the residence halls, even some that go unreported.

“There’s probably more things that go on than I hear about,” she said.

Wilson said hall directors take many precautions to prevent harassment of residents in the halls.

“At the beginning of the year, I talked to my staff about the kinds of behaviors they shouldn’t allow to go on,” she said.

Wilson said hall directors do not get involved in most cases but let resident assistants try to work things out between residents.

“As long as they were fairly minor things, the RAs would talk with the residents first,” she said.

She said some resident assistants also post bulletin boards clarifying what is and what is not allowed in the residence halls, because what may be funny or harmless to one resident may make another uncomfortable or frightened.

“I think a lot of that is in the eye of the beholder,” Wilson said.

DPS Lt. Isra Harahap said harassment is anything that is intended “to threaten or intimidate another person.”

“We have to be able to prove that it’s either annoying, insulting or a threat,” he said.

The Department of Residence Terms and Conditions Contract, which residents sign when they move into the halls, prohibits any physical or mental abuse.

“All residents, when they sign their room and board contract, sign that they have read this,” Wilson said.

Harahap said DPS deals with many harassment cases in the residence halls.

Harahap said many cases of personal harassment occur at the end of relationships, when an individual continues “bothering” another.

However, the most common forms of harassment reported to DPS are harassing telephone calls, Harahap said. He said most of these calls are “hang-ups,” which can be a form of harassment.

“If you look at the Code of Iowa, continuous phone hang-ups are harassment,” he said.

But Harahap said these cases are rarely solved, because it is “hard to track a phone number or a caller.”

Wilson said a resident should let someone know immediately if he or she believes harassment is taking place.

“What it comes down to is if a resident feels like they’re being harassed, they need to let their RA know,” she said.