Thieves stole personal items from the College of Fine Arts seven times this semester, although most of the thefts were preventable, according to the Boston University Police Department.
The incidents include a Jan. 24 incident in which five people reported having personal items stolen from an unattended practice room.
“We suspect the perpetrators are people not affiliated with the university,” said BUPD Sgt. Jack St. Hilaire. “BU is a quintessential urban campus. These were crimes of opportunity. No doors are locked, it’s open to public access and someone probably went through and looked for wallets and cash in backpacks and jackets.”
There were 36 CFA thefts reported in 2006, with 90 percent deemed “preventable,” St. Hilaire said. CFA building security policy allows open access to the building during “peak hours” and card swipe access after hours, said CFA dean ad interim Walt Meissner.
Despite these policies, all students can use their BU ID card to let other people into the building, allowing access to someone who may not be affiliated with the university, said CFA sophomore Jessica Chatterton.
“The practice rooms need a card to get into,” she said in an email. “Everyone holds the door open for someone on the other side or lets the person on the outside in. The students of CFA are the security of CFA.”
Meissner said while CFA promotes the importance of security in the building, he also wants the college to promote an open community within the university and in Boston.
“We continually reassess our security policies, but we must also consider the negative effects of too many restrictions,” he said in an email. “We want the public to come to our performances and exhibitions, and we have literally thousands of students, faculty, staff and patrons coming in and out of our buildings every day.
“We live and work in an open, exciting, artful community, and it could become debilitating to enforce a completely closed environment,” he continued.
CFA senior Andrea Levine, whose wallet stolen in CFA last year, said she still sees “little to no security.”
“I don’t think the students could do anything more than keep a closer eye on their things,” she said. “This is a building problem.”
Despite recent incidents, there has been a decrease in CFA theft because of prevention initiatives instituted two years ago, St. Hilaire said. These programs include increased video surveillance, awareness campaigns and a BUPD liaison officer assigned to the CFA building.
“There are unexpected times when thefts may increase,” Meissner said. “But overall, during a given year, we seem to be making progress.”
Other BU colleges, meanwhile, are maximizing safety and security policies. Items were vandalized in the College of Communication building last December after WTBU members left an outside door propped open, violating a security policy implemented by the COM administration, according to a Jan. 17 Daily Free Press article.
WTBU has not changed its security policy since the incident, said general manager Ryan Harbin, a COM senior.
The College of Arts and Sciences administration works closely to minimize larceny, said dean Jeffrey Henderson.
“The college works with chair[persons] and directors to maintain standard preventive practices, so as to avoid thefts of personal belongings from offices and equipment from classrooms and labs,” he said.
St. Hilaire said the preventability of thefts is why BUPD tries to educate students even more on the risks of leaving their belongings unattended.
“If 90 percent of thefts are preventable, we shouldn’t have any,” he said. “We can’t do it alone, so we really have to work with the staff, faculty and students to get the word out.”
This is an account occasionally used by the Daily Free Press editors to post archived posts from previous iterations of the site or otherwise for special circumstance publications. See authorship info on the byline at the top of the page.
