When Harvard Law School (HLS) student Rachel E. Morrisey e-mailed a dean in December to complain about unidentified males peeping in dorm bathrooms, she didn’t know she would initiate a change in the way the University responds to safety concerns.

The second-year law student met yesterday with HLS Dean of Students Ellen M. Cosgrove and Harvard University Police Department (HUPD) officers. It was the second in a series of meetings scheduled for this spring, and the latest step in Morrisey’s quest for heightened dorm security and better coordination.

The peeping incidents have been a concern for female HLS students since orientation week last fall, when the first of five—an unusually high number—occurred.

Morrisey is now the main liaison between the administration and the women she lives with in the Gropius Complex.

“So far, she’s accomplished getting their attention,” says Amal M. Bass, who lives on Morrisey’s floor and was the victim of the latest peeping incident in December. “Now they’re listening to us.”

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Gropius Complex, a cluster of five small dorms attached to HLS’s Harkness Commons, is the only spot on Harvard’s campus to report peeping incidents since September.

“Seeing this many peeping incidents in one time is an anomaly,” says HUPD spokesman Steven G. Catalano, adding that one to two per year is the norm.

The loudest call for action comes from the fourth floor of Gropius’ Story Hall, one of two all-female floors in the complex and the site of two of the five incidents.

“It’s something that a lot of people have been very upset about and complaining about,” Morrisey says.

After a man peeped at a woman showering in November, Bass says she became more cautious, gathering fellow students to venture to the bathroom with her.

But she was alone on Dec. 18, a Saturday during exam week when half the others on her floor had taken off for winter break. Bass had just studied for six hours and was relaxing with a late afternoon shower.

When she heard heavy, running footsteps, she says she didn’t suspect anything. “I was in another world,” she recalls.

But then she heard a friend yelling that there was a man in the bathroom. Bass ran into the hallway with just a towel.

After her friend called HUPD, the intruder peeked twice out of the bathroom door and ran toward the stairs, wearing just a t-shirt, shorts, and flip-flops, Bass says.