I knew something was wrong when I walked in and saw my roommates sitting in the living room wearing grim expressions on their faces.
Check your room, they told me. And as I walked in, it hit me. Several of my things had been thrown on the floor. Some of the dresser drawers were open, barely hanging from their slots.
We had been robbed.
My case of CD’s? Gone. Jewelry lying on the bureau? Gone. My personal CD player on the desk? Gone.
Questions were now racing through my head. What else did they take? Where were the police? Didn’t anybody see this happen? How did they get in? Two of my roommates had also been robbed of some of their things. The thieves had gotten in through the kitchen window, in broad daylight, around lunchtime when none of us were there, and the police had already been there to record what happened. That was it.
We were basically told: “Too bad, it could have been worse, and have a nice day.”
It ain’t pleasant being robbed. It was and still is the worse feeling of violation I have ever experienced; like rape. I had never been robbed before, but surprisingly a lot of on-campus residents have. But there was nothing they could say to relieve me of my anger, despair, and frustration. S– happens, they said. Be thankful that you weren’t there when they were, and, as before, it could have been worse.
I am frustrated at this school, which is supposed to be protecting our safety and preventing things like this from occurring. I know I pay a hell of a lot of money to come here and I expect to have top-notch security on this campus. I’ve been told there’s nothing much one can do about it. But there are tons of things that could be done. People should be warned. Apartments should be armed with some kind of alarm system. Everyone knows that they are extremely vulnerable to robberies. Security should be beefed up around campus, particularly in this building-where not one, not two but three robberies have occurred.
If so much attention is being paid to giving goddamn parking tickets, then where the hell are the police when our homes are getting burglarized? Can you say priority check?
Derek Bramble is a junior majoring in broadcast journalism.