I would be lying if I said I wasn’t paranoid about getting my laptop stolen. Although it is password protected and I back it up daily, I cannot function without a laptop, and the cost of replacing it would decimate my bank account for months.
I’m constantly on my A game, making sure my door is always dead bolted and locked, even if I’m Skyping with my mom outside in the hallway, and using my laptop lock everywhere I go. I even downloaded Prey Protect, a free tracking software.
Frankly, this is the only way to be sure my computer is safe and secure.
About 40 laptops have been stolen on campus since August, according to Public Safety. The consistent pattern so far has shown that many of laptops stolen from residence halls have been from rooms that were not dead bolted, according to The Eagle and an anonymous RA.
The Residence Hall Association and Public Safety are urging students to dead bolt their doors at all time and to not leave their laptops unattended at the library, where laptop thefts also have occurred in the past, according to The Eagle.
A discussion recently broke out on Facebook among members of the Class of 2015 about safety, what measures should be taken and how far AU should go to keep us safe.
One student suggested AU take safety measures to catch the thief and any other possible thieves, such as installing cameras into the residence halls. Another suggested a double barrier system on doors.
Although I find some of these ideas helpful, they seem to be solutions that would take longer to implement, and thus would only help in the long run.
The main question, though, was, “Shouldn’t AU be safe enough that we don’t need to dead bolt our doors? Shouldn’t locking them be enough?”
Not matter how beautiful and ideal that would be, it’s about time the student body notice that we live at a university, not in a utopia. I don’t see a large amount of students giving up their privacy for a safety measure such as cameras, when all they could do is make sure they dead bolt a door and look alive.
At the end of the day, there are measures we can take to make sure we are safe, while we wait for AU to go through the bureaucratic process of decision making for solutions such as cameras and double barrier doors.
Dead bolt your doors. Always have your key. Invest in iCloud or Prey Protect and, especially, a lock for your laptop. Ask someone to look after your stuff if you need to find a book or go to the bathroom, and try and look out for suspicious-looking people around your halls.
We can’t really blame ourselves for trusting AU with the safety of our objects; but, at the same time, we can’t blame AU for “not doing enough” to protect us. We can only blame the culprit and do our part to keep ourselves safe.
Julia Greenwald is a freshman in the School of Communication.
edpage@theeagleonline.com
