By Dani Frank and Rebecca Astheimer
We know you are out there. Taking nude photos of yourself using the camera on Becca’s stolen phone. Give it back. We are sure you were eying it while running laps on the track in the recreation center and singing R. Kelly’s weekend jam, “Ignition.” Just as “World’s Greatest” was ending, you decided to go against Kelly’s infinite wisdom to be “that star up in the sky…that mountain peak up high” and pocket her Verizon LG phone. For shame. You have lowered yourself in our eyes, as well as Master Kelly’s-which is not the easiest thing to do, considering he created “Trapped in the Closet.”
While this could easily become an ode to R. (as so many of our works wind up), we have more important things to discuss. Theft. Kleptomania. Where Becca’s two phones (yes, this is the second time), sweatpants, Dani’s leggings. And three quarters of the wardrobe of one of our building’s residents have gone off to. Seeing something you want and taking it for yourself is an easy way to get what you want.
A North Face fleece just lying on a chair on the upper level of the gym. It may look abandoned, but it does have an owner and they will be beyond frustrated if they come back and it is missing! At this point in your life if you think taking someone else’s belongings just because you can is fun and rewarding, you may have a future jail cell waiting for you next to DMX’s. And we all know he is not getting out any time soon.
Besides just having a cell phone, which is in this day and age essential, stolen, we also had our feeling of safety at the recreation center taken away.
The upper level of the rec center has clothing, bags and shoes strewn all about the couches and chairs. A student comes in from the cold, doesn’t feel like depositing their items in a locker, and lays them on a couch and go to exercise. Now, they are not expecting to come back and find any of their things missing. So to return to your belongings and see something missing, it destroys any amount of trust you had placed in the goodness of other gym-going people.
The laundry room is another den of thieves. Not only do you have to fight off a herd of students to get a decent drier, you need to be on constant alert of your clothes being taken out of the drier and put on a washing machine. It would seem safe to think that why would another student want to steal your clothes? They are not new. They have been worn. Most obviously, they are not theirs to take! But we have both lost clothing to the great abyss of the laundry room. There are fliers all throughout our building asking for help in finding one student’s laundry. Three quarters of his wardrobe was in the process of being laundered, and now it is all gone. What is the University coming to when students’ pre-owned clothing is stolen?!
We may be cynical already, but this is just pushing the limit. One has to account for their things, and it is not the wisest decision to leave something of value where it could be taken. But we are all college students trying to co-exist in a community of education together. The amount of thefts reported in the Public Safety briefs each week is disconcerting. Stealing never has been and never will be the answer! We thought that had been obvious since about the age of eight, but whoever is wearing Dani’s ordinary black leggings, and listening to Becca’s Bob Dylan ring tone go off, never got the message. Basically, we hate you. And so does Bob Dylan.
Sincerely, Hootie and the Blowfish.
Dani Frank is a sophomore print journalism student. You may e-mail her at
[email protected]. Rebecca Astheimer is a sophomore film student. You may e-mail her at