Priya Adhikari has been losing sleep lately, but it’s not because finals are coming up.

“It’s actually very scary,” the UBC student told CTV News. “You’re not safe in the place where you’re living.”

Adhikari and the other women who live in her all-female dormitory have taken to kicking the doors of washroom stalls open, in case there’s a predator lurking inside them.

The dorm the women live in has been the site of a string of five incidents in which a suspicious man has been seen loitering where he’s not supposed to be. The most recent incident happened on Thursday.

“He was trying to open every girl’s door, and he was trying to get inside the washroom,” Adhikari said.

Police believe these prowling events may have been perpetrated by the same man who sexually assaulted a woman on campus Friday night.

The 20-year-old victim was walking on Wesbrook Mall when the man came out of a wooded area and grabbed her from behind.

He forced her to the ground and rubbed his midsection on her back in a sexual manner before she was able to fight him off.

The attack was reminiscent of a string of campus sex attacks in 2013, which prompted the school to step up security measures.

UBC installed 35 new “blue phones” - which connect directly to campus security - and spent $750,000 to increase the amount of lighting on campus, said Louise Cowin, the university’s vice president of students.

Each of the blue phones will be equipped with a camera, which activates whenever someone pushes the button to use the phone. The university also plans to install four surveillance cameras at the trolley bus loop in April, Cowin said.

“These recommendations all came from a task force that was struck by then-president Stephen Toope,” she said.

The task force stopped short of recommending surveillance cameras in dorm common areas, however, a decision made out of respect for student privacy. Instead, the university boosted the school’s Safe Walk program and made the aforementioned lighting and visibility changes.

Since the prowling incidents began, the university has increased the number of security officers on duty and the frequency of their patrols, Cowin said.

Maddie Chow, who lives in the same dorm as Adhikari, said she has seen more police around the building as well.

“With the cops here, I guess I feel safer, but still coming here knowing that there’s a need for cops, it’s still kind of scary,” Chow said. 

With files from CTV Vancouver’s Sarah MacDonald