The Derwent College JCR was robbed on Saturday morning, with the culprits getting away with a flat screen TV and a Nintendo Wii, as well as games and DVDs totaling over £1,000.
A group of students had left the door to the JCR propped open by a bin after leaving it at around 1.30am, allowing an unknown number of perpetrators to get in and steal the equipment.
“I was not informed about this until a member of the JCRC actually texted me, even though all the equipment stolen belonged to the JCRC and was bought last year,” said Derwent Chair Matt Jenkins.
The police were informed of the incident, and the Crime Investigation Unit came by on Saturday morning but could not find any usable fingerprints. The campus security team reviewed the CCTV footage from the two working cameras in Derwent. However, due to the poor picture quality, they were not able to get a recognisable image of the culprits.
“I have on numerous occasions since I took over as Chair highlighted the lack of CCTV around Derwent, both at College level, and in meetings with YUSU,” said Jenkins.
“We are a college based in the edge of campus; we have hardly any CCTV and no 24/7 portering. It is an absolute joke.”
The University insurance policy only covers anything in excess of £5,000, which means that the JCR will get no financial support from the University to replace what was stolen.
“The equipment we have lost will come out of the JCRC’s own funds, something which we cannot afford due to the money which we have to safeguard to cover the astronomical costs of equipment for club D’s. Incidentally, nothing has been done about that since Vision broke the story last term.”
This comes after break-ins in Derwent accommodation blocks and attempted bike thefts last year.
“What will it take for someone in the University to realise that it is not safe to have very little security for an entire college, in an isolated location on the edge of campus, every night and all weekend?” Jenkins concludes.
Well this sucks. Good job the university is here to help us… oh wait.
“The equipment we have lost will come out of the JCRC’s own funds, something which we cannot afford due to the money which we have to safeguard to cover the astronomical costs of equipment for club D’s.”
I’d have thought charging £25 for an event on campus would do that…
“I’d have thought charging £25 for an event on campus would do that…”
I think you are a bit confused between a Club D and the YUSU event in fresher’s week. We actually only charge around £3.50 for a ticket to our events, a price that we would love to lower but can’t due to the overheads of holding such an event. We’re holding an event in Week 7 if you would like to come on down and find out a bit more about what a Club D is like, but you’ll have to get a ticket early becuse it is likely to sell out.
@lol
or maybe ‘lol’ is getting confused with Big D, an event not run by Derwent JCRC, but instead by the Big D committee, where ALL profits go to charity and the college receives nothing.
i think lol is a virgin
@lol
If you don’t know about what you’re talking about, don’t comment.
Big D is a charitable event, with the JCRC receiving none of the proceeds.
Well I met one of the idiots who left the door open after he kicked us out the JCR so he could play card games.
Fool.
Actually, it wasn’t robbed. It was burgled. Robbery involves the threat of violence. Just sayin’.
The answer is not more CCTV or additional expense on security, rather make those responsible for compromising the venue’s security accountable. CCTV encourages people to be lax in their approach to security which invites more problems as well as all the issues to do with invasion of privacy.
This is not about portering, or CCTV.
Yes those are wider issues which need addressing, but it’s naive to blame this theft on those issues.
The real issue here is the morons who left the bloody door open!
Granted it is not ideal that the JCR door was left open, but what about the bar which is next door and has no locks on the door? The bar has 2 widescreen TVs and a projector, with absolutely no protection- it is open 24/7. I do not understand how people do not see the importance of CCTV- shall we just get rid of all sorts of security and let the freshers secure themselves? I’m sure that’s safe.
@Matt Jenkins
The bar and other University areas with valuable items such as those you listed should also be locked when staff aren’t present or there isn’t a group using such areas with responsibility for the area at that time.
As for letting “freshers secure themselves,” I’m evidently not suggesting removing locks from doors and some sort of security presence on campus is necessary. CCTV being put in every conceivable location and campaigning for enough increased portering such that the campus looks like Belmarsh isn’t the answer.
Why on Earth does the sentence in the quote
“I was not informed about this until a member of the JCRC actually texted me, even though all the equipment stolen belonged to the JCRC and was bought last year,” said Derwent Chair Matt Jenkins.
need an “even though”? It does not make any sense. I wish people would think before they speak.
@ Peter Spence
I agree that the bar area should be locked up, but this has nothing to do with me, as my concern lies with student welfare. Putting CCTV in every conceivable location is not my suggestion. What I do suggest is we put one in the bar, used by over 400 people a day for catering, and one in the JCR which is booked almost every night by various societies who we let use our JCR free of charge, unlike most other colleges. This way we can be confident that if incidences occur in these core student areas we at least have some recording of the event. It may also be useful to have all the blocks within the view of a camera, especially areas which in the last two years have been persistent areas of crime, as stated in the article. Thus, this is 8 working security cameras, protecting the core areas of living space for 400 on campus students. This surely is not to much to ask?
@Matt Jenkins
Firstly I shall clarify my position, I am not concerned by the nominal number of security cameras, but by the frequency and number of students monitored by them and the invasion of privacy this constitutes.
Secondly I laud your concern for student welfare, it is one I share. You seem not to function the deleterious effects of security cameras into this calculation of welfare at all, which is where I think we must disagree.
Rather than suggesting security cameras as a solution after the horse has bolted, why not tackle the root problem by introducing proper incentives? If we do not hold accountable those who use a common area, then a tragedy of the commons type situation may arise, where such an area is not treated respectfully (and with regards to security, sensibly) by those students who use them. I also do not see any justification for the student body having to pay for extra security provisions (both financially and in terms of the restrictions on freedom they impose) rather than the minority who through negligence enable crime.
Finally we must ask how effective CCTV cameras are even when of a very high quality. Quite simply, they aren’t. The statistics simply don’t show a good correlation between their presence and a reduction in crime and for every camera in the UK (currently 1 for every 32 of us) the proportion of crimes solved as a result of CCTV is tiny. It is very easy to obscure’s ones features and the only identifiable images likely to be captured by such devices are of law abiding staff and students on campus. There is no case for the University to have knowledge of where and how these people choose to spend their time.
This is certainly too much to ask.
@Peter Spence
Whilst that is all well and good, I fail to see any feasible directions offered by yourself. Yesterday I found out that over the Easter holidays expensive equipment (which I will not clarify as its yet to be investigated) was also stolen from Derwent Bar. Thus it is clear that incompetency in room use is not the reason for these robberies, although it was clearly an aid in this particular one. We are clearly a target. Having a campus which was built to be open has its positives and negatives, but it is clear that a time has arrived where areas which were once open for freshers 24/7 must now be closed as even if we did want more security, it would probably take the university a few years to find the funding and then they would probably scrap the plans in order to pay for something else on Hes East.
And I must reply to your doubts over the use of security cameras. Yes, it does mean that a live security camera will act as a slight invasion of privacy when they are eating breakfast and dinner, but surely this is cannot detract from the huge benefit they provide to safety in a campus environment. Let me cite an example from last year. A student on a cricket social arrived in D Bar extremely drunk. After getting aggressive, he was asked to leave by the bar manager. The student then proceeded to take a swing at the bar manager, and within 30 seconds security arrived to help control the lad, because they had seen it all unfolding on CCTV. I contest that if we had one more security camera in the bar, which faced the sitting area and thus the largest part of the bar, then the bar will be much safer, and maybe we wouldn’t have had that equipment stolen in the bar like we did in the JCRC.
I 100% agree with your comment that ‘If we do not hold accountable those who use a common area, then a tragedy of the commons type situation may arise, where such an area is not treated respectfully (and with regards to security, sensibly) by those students who use them.’ These areas do need to treated with more respect. However, they are on occasions not. This leaves us with two choices. Do we remove yet another social space from campus? One of the very few I know which for free allows students to drink, have access to a projector, and prior to Saturday access to a TV and 2 consoles. Or, as I have suggested earlier, do we insert a security camera, which although will act as an unwanted invasion of privacy, must be accepted under the terms of our college allowing them to book our free social space, and to act as an insurer of respectful behavior?
For, in the 13 academic weeks I have been Chair, it is clear that however hard you try students will not always follow our security-conscience advise, or indeed treat an area respectfully. To cite another example, last term a society used Derwent JCR for a movie night. They left the JCR in a poor state, and left the projector bulb on overnight. However, I was the one to receive the email to clear up their mess. This is because the head of their society simply replied to the email she received that they left the JCR in a good condition, and thus we could not hold them accountable, although it was clearly them who has made the mess (they left the JCR at midnight, and the cleaning team arrived at 8).
I’m not saying I have all the answers, or indeed any answers, but in Derwents position at the moment where we are clearly a target, be it from students or outsiders, and something needs to be done quickly to ensure this does not continue.
Otherwise, the stable door will never close, and the horses will continue to bolt.
Those blaming the security breach entirely on the open door are fools. The campus doors are easy to break open with a crowbar or brute force. The locks in Le Page Court halls could be opened with a bent coat hanger and some strength if you knew what you were doing [we did point this out to porters, they said they’d get it sorted]. Tumbler/Yale locks, the kind on most rooms, are vulnerable to bump-keying [effortless lockpicking, see link]. Windows can be smashed through, security tether or none. The only theives you’re stopping by relying on locked doors are lazy, opportunistic ones. Which I’ll concede, is a large proportion of them. But not all of them.
This doesn’t even cover the possibility of using social engineering or simply following someone into a room to gain access to valuables to steal. The only way to effectively prevent theft is to actually have a some human eyes which can raise an alarm if theft is detected and physically intervene.
I’m surprised that nobody is focusing on the real issue here – why the hell wasn’t the stuff properly insured? Most of us will dish out the £60 or so it costs to insure the ~£2k or so of possession we kept in our rooms for a year.
And for TVs specifically, it’s cost-effective to have their frame bolted in place when they’re standing on the ground.
Bump-keying – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwTVBWCijEQ