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By Cali Kees and Joel Vanner

A part-time faculty member in the College of Arts & Sciences was abruptly dismissed from Quinnipiac Tuesday after students reported he had been sending them numerous emails that sought romantic relationships.

Students in former part-time faculty member Tcho Caulker’s evening QU 301 class were told via email Tuesday at 5:11 p.m. that he is no longer at Quinnipiac. The action occurred after current and former students reported that Caulker sent them messages they described as inappropriate to the university’s Department of Public Safety.

Public safety officers removed Caulker from his morning class in Tator Hall at 11:15 a.m.

Q30 News reached out to Caulker using the Gmail in which he reached out to his students on for a statement, in which he replied and attached the following:



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The latest known email to six women, including five current or former Quinnipiac students and one at Eastern Connecticut State University, contained language that suggested he sought a romantic relationship with a specific Quinnipiac alumna.

Q30 News interviewed one of the women who received emails from Caulker. She asked for and was granted anonymity for this article but agreed to be interviewed and recorded by phone to tell her side of the story.

The woman said she enrolled in the QU 301 class for the 2016-2017 academic year, and Caulker began sending her multiple emails per day after she graduated from Quinnipiac.

“He had been messaging me personally for over 11 months sending me more than three messages, like long paragraphs, a day,” she said. “Nothing worrisome at first and then just one day everything took a turn.”

Caulker discussed his life and how he wanted to be with her.

“He would do anything to get my attention and he started sending me pictures of his house and booking plane flights for me and sending me gifts and… just all this stuff and I thought it had gone too far,” she explained.

At first, she thought she could just ignore the emails but, after 11 months of receiving emails from Caulker, she began to realize that she was not the only one receiving these romantic emails.

Occasionally Caulker would send “mass” emails to multiple women. She decided to bring the emails that she had been receiving to Quinnipiac’s Department of Public Safety in hopes that they would become aware of the situation, and if a situation like this were to start to arise in the future it could be prevented.

“Once I brought it to QU’s attention everyone else started bringing it to QU’s attention and all these emails started coming out that have acquired over the past three years, I think,” she said.

After this was brought to Quinnipiac’s attention, she explained that the school did what they thought was appropriate.

“I believe QU from my understanding had received emails from him as well saying that he knew where me and some of my friends worked, where we lived, things like that,” she said. “They were starting to get concerned for our safety and the safety of the other, our other friends and other people on the campus.”

The women receiving emails from Caulker did not receive only one or a few.

“I personally received over 300 emails from him,” she said. “I’m not positive about everyone else but I know everyone else had received multiple emails.”

Even after the women had asked him to stop he continued to email every one of them.

“I know the other girls had asked him nicely to stop and he never stopped for any of us,” she explained.

Throughout these alleged three years of emails, she believes that no one that has received these kinds of emails from Caulker has come forward before. She believes that the University may have some reports of odd interactions students have had with Caulker, but nothing to this extent.

“They had like little details from the past nothing as…he hasn’t taken it as far with the other girls as he has with us,” she said.

Emailing is not the only form of contact that Caulker has attempted to make with these women.

“I personally have received multiple requests on Facebook, on Instagram, on Twitter, on Snapchat, he has found on text me app. He had found me on every social media,” she said.

While this woman had Caulker as a Professor for her QU 301 class, others who have received emails have not.

Caulker served as her professor in QU 301 and found him to be “a really sweet like normal guy, everything,” she said.

She explained that she never really had a special bond with him in class.

“I never was a teacher’s pet, I never went to office hours,” she said.

Despite not having any sort of special bond, the emails started after graduation.

She did not have a different experience in Caulker’s class than any of his students from this semester. The Q30 News Team went to Caulker’s former 6:30 p.m. lecture to speak to students about their reaction to Caulker’s removal as well as what their perception of him was as their professor.

“I never got any inappropriate or overwhelming vibes from him. But he definitely is a very passionate guy about what he teaches and about us pursuing our goals…so I do see how that could be possibly misinterpreted,” senior Alexandra Halaris said.

Shaina Bauersachs, another student in the class, mirrored Halaris’ opinion.

“I was surprised but not, like, shocked because he was always…I mean, he was really nice and understanding but I could see where that could be misunderstood,” Bauersachs said.

Our source, who wished to remain anonymous, did not know any of the other girls who had received emails from Caulker before this whole situation. As mentioned before, he would occasionally send “mass” emails and this is how she found out about the other women.

“A lot of the emails he had sent to me he sent to just me personally… but a good portion of them he included at least five or ten other girls,” she said. “Either girls he had talked to in the past, or girls who were friends of these girls who he sent multiple messages to.”

These “mass” emails allowed these girls to connect. She said that because of them she started getting Facebook messages from the other girls that she had been grouped together in these emails with.

She said that this group of girls did not want any harm to be the outcome of them going to the Department of Public Safety. All that she personally wanted was for Caulker to stop reaching out to her.

“He was reaching out to my home friends, my family, I just personally wanted him to stop that because he… just the things he was saying were almost… they were just… they just made it seem like we had a relationship or something like that it’s just almost embarrassing,” she said.

The main goal for her was to get Caulker to stop contacting people from her personal and she is optimistic that now it will end.

When the emails did “take a turn” she became very worried.

“Based on some of his the way he was talking and stuff I didn’t really know what he would do next. I didn’t think he was…he didn’t sound stable all the time so I definitely got worried,” she said.

This situation has been brought to the Hamden Police Department and is currently an open investigation.



Updated 9:09 p.m. April 27, 2018. This article will be updated as new information is released.