On Oct. 1, a Boston University men’s hockey player had his laptop, iPod and speakers totaling about $1,500 stolen from his room on Bay State Road. The residents of the brownstone said a faulty door was to blame for letting unknown thieves into their homes.

The next week, nearly $5,500 worth of laptops and equipment was stolen from a South Campus apartment. The residents said the thieves gained entrance by fiddling with a broken doorknob.

While it is unknown if the incidents and other campus break-ins since the semester began are related in any way, the message students should take to heart is a clear one: Lock your doors and don’t take safety for granted.

We hear it all the time from administrators — students’ safety is their top priority. But it should be students’ top priority as well. Even the largest dorms on campus aren’t completely safe, and sometimes people enter our homes who don’t belong there.

However, when the matter involves parts of a building BU is responsible for maintaining — a doorknob, lock or doorframe — students have a right to be concerned that their homes may not be taken care of properly. When these issues are brought to the eye of the public, they usually bring about change.

The same goes for most issues. A couple weeks ago, we ran a story about two students who said a BU director in London told them they lied about having bedbugs in their room. When that story came to our desk, we were confident in the validity of the accusations, but we held the story for weeks to ensure we were certain of the story’s details and to give BU a proper chance to explain the situation. We called around BU’s various offices and sent emails for a week, and only heard back from very few, which we included in the story.

The day the story ran, we received letters from readers about the subject — some praising BU for dealing with pests quickly and some lamenting similar situations with the bugs. One letter, from an administrator in the International Programs office, said the students’ accusations were false.

Once the situation was out in the open, these invaluable letters showed many more sides of the story; in the administrator’s letter, he said the London offices will now use the same protocol as used by the Housing Office on the Charles River Campus.

It’s naturally not in the university’s best interests to publicize these incidents that may turn away prospective students. Although the BU Police Department posts brief notices on its homepage, you won’t find the full story anywhere but in the pages of our newspaper. The students deserve to know what is happening in their backyards, and so do parents, prospective students and the general public.

If we miss a story you heard about that you think is important for students to know, tell us about it, and we’ll look into it. We promise.

Thanks for reading.

Matt Negrin Editor-in-Chief

Jason Millman Managing Editor