The response by the Department of Public Safety to the recent burglaries on South Campus is an outrage. What makes it outrageous? This is not the first or even the second time that 151 Winding Ridge has been burglarized in recent years. Less than a year ago, my apartment in 151 Winding Ridge was burglarized, along with four others in the building. DPS did absolutely nothing to inform the SU community about this string of break-ins at the time, and to this day no one has heard of the incident other than through word of mouth. The burglars were never identified.

The worst part of the whole thing was that DPS took zero responsibility for our losses, despite the fact that I could have done nothing more to secure my stuff: All the doors were locked, including the sliding glass door and my upstairs bedroom door, which were both broken through by the intruders. The apartments offered a completely false sense of security.

The location of 151 Winding Ridge makes it a painfully easy target. Thieves gain direct access on foot from a next-door neighbor and can operate out of sight the whole time. I was never warned that my apartment was at a higher risk.

In a one-on-one meeting with one of the officers in charge of the investigation, I strongly expressed my dissatisfaction with DPS and told them how I should have been warned. Furthermore I demanded that future residents of 151 Winding Ridge be warned. The officer’s response was infuriatingly lackadaisical, and he even blamed me for not having a lock box. But what was I supposed to do — keep a 25-inch non-flat-screen television in a lock box? To top it all off, the broken glass from the sliding glass door was never removed and served as a constant reminder of what had happened until I filed my own request to FIXit to have it cleaned up.

All in all, DPS seemed to show little concern for the well-being of South Campus residents, and this second undisclosed chain of thefts in less than 12 months is a testament to that. I believe SU students have a right to be notified of these incidents. What else hasn’t DPS told us?

Chris Bordne

Senior aerospace engineering major

Published on December 5, 2010 at 12:00 pm