Okay in the space of just two weeks, my university accomadation has had two major thefts.
The first being someone laptop got stolen, by someone reaching in through his window. Which doesn’t even open that wide.
The second being, an X-Box and Gamecube (and some games) from our common room, which they had to fully break in and then walk out. Without anyone even noticing anything.
Luckily I think the guys who owned these things are insured. It is just irritating.
Plus we have had a whole host of random people hanging around, before and some after. So people know that students live there, let’s them know easy targets. I guess that is just one of the downsides to living off campus.
Last year in my dorm, our little hall wing was pretty close. We kept the doors unlocked most of the time (locked only when needing privacy, leaving for an extended period of time, or locking people out of their rooms while you’re in there watching TV). Not like the locks did anything; Kag can attest to the fact that a simple coat hanger could open those doors. Anyway, one person who wasn’t on our hall but was in it most of the time (one of his friends from back home was on our hall) stole a check from one of my friend’s rooms sometime when no one was around (I imagine he did it during lunch or dinner). He then used the check to forge a $400 check to use as collateral in a highly illegal casino-being-run-out-of-a-guy’s-house poker game (seriously, it had various professional tables set up as stations; people bet on Madden games, etc). He luckily won more than $400 (the guy he stole it from didn’t have $400 in his bank account). However, the thief then took the check and used it over the phone to pay for $50 worth of phone sex.
The thief dropped out of UGA (right before Christmas). He was charged with fraud and some other little things. However, the police said he couldn’t be charged with breaking and entering because the doors were unlocked and it occurred in the dorm by another dormmate. The thief’s father tried bribing my fried to not press charges (and this has occurred before, the thief’s done this quite a bit). The thief brokered a deal for probation, and he reenrolled in UGA. Here’s the kicker. He got back into the same dorm, not two months after all this occurred. UGA paid to have all the doors changed so that the coat hanger no longer worked, and we all had to start locking our doors.
People at my school are too trusting. They’ll leave their laptops out in the open in the library and go for a washroom break or seomthing. There have been many times where, if I wer of the mind, I’d be able to get away with stealing it.
How’s this? A couple years ago before I was a student here, someone went into the parking lot and stole the rims off 8 cars that were parked next to each other. In one night.
Since then they’ve cracked down on security in the areas around the dorms, but still - that’s pretty shitty security.
I know for most of the entrances, and common rooms in our dorms here, its all video taped. Like this weekend, someone took a chair from an outside patio, and the area is camera-ed, and ya, they got caught.
