Growing concerns over campus security

Unwanted people lurking on campus

A theft from Vanbrugh College accommodation last Friday was the most recent in the trend, with a student having his window forced and his wallet and laptop stolen. Derwent College has also fallen victim to a series of incidents, involving the attempted burglary of a first-floor room in one block where the window was smashed, and the actual theft of a laptop from another.

These incidents have shaken students’ confidence in the security of their rooms on campus, and their belief in campus as a safe place. An apparent increase in bike thefts in and around Derwent College has also raised concerns.

Laptop theft from unattended desks in the library has also been reported. A second-year Law student recently left his work on a desk while he went to the ground floor to check out some books, returning to find his laptop gone. While the University has emphasised this was a fairly isolated incident, it has raised issues over students’ working environments.

A theft from a room in the Department of Music has also been reported. Through examination of CCTV footage, a man has been arrested and charged with the offence, although the Press Office did not specify whether the thief was a student or an outside person. An idea to assess the most vulnerable areas on campus has also been suggested, involving a close examination of the individual colleges.

Potentially in light of these well-publicised events, Jon-Mark Buchanan, the new Police Chief Constable for the University of York, is keen to assure students of their safety and address any issues they might have. He wants to set up a drop-in service for students to ask questions on an informal one-to-one basis about security.

Yet, despite reports to the contrary, laptop theft on campus hasn’t seemed to rise dramatically over the last few months. According to the University Press Officer, David Garner, “since 1st January, there have been five laptops stolen from ground floor student accommodation” – a figure that isn’t unusually high, especially given rumours of twenty laptops stolen over the last two months. Garner told the yorker that, "in three cases entry was gained by forcing the windows, though in one instance the student had previously removed window restrictors thus allowing full access to the room. In the remaining two cases, students had left their windows open”.

It cannot be said that the portering cuts have affected the status of theft on campus, except that one Derwent student had to walk all the way to Vanbrugh to find a porter to report his broken window.

Garner offered his advice to students: "We would urge students to make sure their rooms are secure when they are unoccupied” and emphasised that “leaving valuable personal items unattended in public areas" should be avoided at all costs.

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