Give Butt B Back the World

Some jerk stole the large framed "What's Up? South!" map off the wall outside the offices by the Butterfield B bridge over the weekend. What would a klepto-vandal even do with this thing? It's been up there for years doing the humble service of reorienting the spatial perception of passersby, and now it's going to be stuck in someone's bedroom?

Apparently the map is also part of an important tradition for international students in which each new student puts a sticker indicating where they're from on the map during orientation, and the last time I saw it the map was riddled with them.

If you've got any info about its whereabouts, email the Butterfields Area Coordinator at smbrown@wesleyan.edu (especially if you live in Butt B, since you might end up getting billed for its replacement if it's not found).

Re: Kleptomania University

For the past week or so, my bike, an admittedly shitty early 80's Huffy Strider, has been lying on its side (Yes! In the rain!), with the front tire chained to the bike rack outside of the Science Center. Today as I was walking to class, I noticed that someone had:

1. Unlocked my bike from the rack
2. Placed it securely into the rack
3. Locked it again.

How awesome/weird is that?! Goes to show that there are at least some good samaritans. Who just happen to know how to pick bicycle locks.

Kleptomania University

Wesleyan is in many ways "shit, where's my stuff?" University. Weekly, The Argus publishes Public Safety's report for the previous week and in between the random gun shot heard on Broad Street and some random dude pissing on the side of a senior woodframe, tons of laptops, iPods, bikes, wallets, rings, and other things of various value are stolen from kids all over campus.

As written previously, I had the seat of my bike taken off my locked bicycle and Xue had her entire bike lifted off her front porch. Molly Hartman '07 mourns the loss of her "piece-of-shit, small, 80's, women's bike" that she had locked to 202 Wash (which, rather than the lock being broken, instead the banister itself was smashed). While Jessica Sullivan '08 had her guitar carried out of her room while she was away. Dan Slimmon '07 lost his iPod while in the ST lab this summer (when few students were on campus).

Estrella Lopez '07 believes in the epicenter theory of Wes thievery: the farther you are away from the campus center, the most thefts you are likely to experience. "People leave valuable shit in the library unattended all the time and that hardly ever gets so much as touched."

Molly believes thieves are just time-conscious. She recounts moving Andrea Silenzi '07 into her senior woodframe just a few days ago on Home Ave when they caught someone casing the neighborhood of wes houses for new stuff. As Molly explains, "the dorm thefts are about people who wait until right after people move in, they know all the freshman forget to lock their windows, and then just hop in and take the laptop."

According to Estrella, this happens frequently and the culprit is rarely a wesleyan student. Last year she tells of two friends leaving their Hirise door open and finding their laptops and iPods gone. The thief somehow gained access to Hirise and ransacked the joint looking for open doors, found theirs and made off. He was caught, thankfully, by a vigilant neighbor who called Psafe, but rarely does someone get their stuff back.

I guess the lesson here is to really listen to what reslife says and lock your windows and doors when you're not in the room. Just use common sense because usually the thieves are just looking for easy heists, not elaborate reenactments of mission impossible.