Police arrested an alleged trespasser in Matthews Hall early yesterday morning, in the latest of a string of break-ins at the dormitory.

At about 4:30 a.m. Friday, a 23-year-old white male waving a dollar bill walked into a suite on the third floor of Matthews asking for change, residents said.

Two of the suite's residents, Alexandra L. DeLaite '99 and Amy Lee '99, who were sitting in the common room at the time, told the man they did not have change. When he left, they called the Harvard police.

The police arrived and arrested the man minutes later on the first floor of the dorm, students said.

The trespasser was familiar to the police and will appear in court today to face charges, Harvard Police Lt. John Stanton said yesterday.

The students said the police revealed more information about the suspect to them.

"They said he's not violent but that he is a practicing thief who will do this all the time," DeLaite said.

The students described the suspect as medium height and scruffy, with short brown hair.

Stanton did not say how the man entered the building, but DeLaite speculated that he could have followed her in when she returned to the dorm at around 4 a.m., or that he could have been hiding in the building's large basement.

DeLaite said the intrusion was disturbing.

"It was a really big shock, when you're sitting in your room and someone invades your space," she said. "Now that we've had so many problems, I'd like to see locking bathroom doors and automatic locking doors."

Unlike some Yard dorms, suite doors in Matthews do not lock unless a students locks the door from the inside.

Dean of Freshmen Elizabeth Studley Nathans said in an e-mail message that administrators are reviewing recent events and are deciding whether additional measures can be taken to improve security in the dorm.

"We have already accelerated the speed of the automatic door closure devices on all Matthews exterior doors [and] have requested additional walk-throughs by Yard security personnel," Nathans wrote.

Harvard police are making extra checks of the building on all shifts "when the workload permits," Stanton said.

According to Nathans, Harvard Yard Operations is examining the feasibility of adding automatic locks to suite doors and combination locks to bathrooms.