Daniel Milzman, the then-Georgetown sophomore who pleaded guilty to possessing a deadly amount of ricin in his McCarthy dorm room last spring, was sentenced Monday to a year in prison. An op-ed written by Thomas Lloyd (SFS ‘15), a Resident Assistant and first responder to the incident, published in The Hoya the following day, described a litany of systemic and incidental hurdles he faced after alerting university officials to the issue on the night of March 17.
These impediments reveal a damning irony about how university officials have approached this case: despite actions taken to protect students from a dangerous situation, the university seems neither willing nor able to protect Lloyd, the student closest to the incident—aside from Milzman himself—and most responsible for ensuring its peaceful resolution.
In his op-ed, Lloyd describes the stress he underwent during and after Milzman’s arrest as both a first responder and student seeking support. The Voice Editorial Board echoes his criticisms. In light of these revelations, Georgetown’s emergency response preparedness must be reexamined, and Residential Living should both alter and clarify its RAs’ roles, liabilities, and rights.
Lloyd’s allegations reflect well on none of the administrative entities he interacted with that night. When he called the Counseling and Psychiatric Services on-call line to inform them that a student had both the means and desire to kill someone, Lloyd waited for over an hour before an unhelpful and dismissive CAPS counselor told him to call someone else. Such unpreparedness and unprofessionalism is inexcusable. The university should have a counselor available 24 hours of the day to respond to this type of unforeseen situation, who is easily reachable and prepared to connect students to appropriate resources.
The de facto gag order against Lloyd is also problematic. In the aftermath of Milzman’s arrest, Lloyd wrote that he felt increasingly pressured to avoid the press. Even members of Residential Living stopped talking to him out of fear of being subpoenaed. Lloyd’s resultant isolation—he was only granted a no-contact order—is unacceptable for one acting as a morally upright member of Georgetown’s community seeking to ensure that a bad situation did not become a tragedy. Georgetown had an obligation to support Lloyd—its employee, no less—whose courageous actions unintentionally placed him in the media spotlight, and it failed.
The incident makes clear that the RA role needs clarification. The university’s inconsistent exploitation of Lloyd’s RA status as a way to bar him from speaking to the press and its denial of legal protection based on the fact that he was not acting in his capacity as an RA when he alerted authorities was nothing but a bureaucratic, self-interested feint meant to save Georgetown from media interest in the immediate aftermath of the incident.
There is no surer test of character than the way one behaves in a crisis, and Residential Living’s behavior in the aftermath of the Milzman incident is nothing short of abhorrent. Of all the parties involved, Lloyd embodied the Jesuit values ostensibly prized by this university most. Despite the sensitive nature of the case, Lloyd should be commended for his initial response to the situation and for putting his job at risk to publicize glaring holes in Georgetown’s emergency response capabilities.
