BC Secure: A Tip on Staying Safe Off-Campus

So far, life off-campus has been pretty deluxe.  From not having an RA to having my own room, the adjustment period has been relatively painless, except for one thing: safety.  To be perfectly honest, when my roommates and I were apartment hunting, it didn’t exactly cross my mind to think about safety.  I never once asked my landlord about an alarm or security system or even if there had been any incidents of theft at our apartment in the past.  It truthfully never occurred to me the risk that my roommates and I were taking by living on the first floor of an apartment building, that is until we got a huge dose of reality on a Tuesday night this September.
 

The whole story is pretty dramatic, but since this is not an episode of Law & Order, I’ll give you the reader’s digest version.  Late on Tuesday night, all of my roommates and three of our friends were over, hanging out and doing laundry.  One of my roommates went back to her room where she discovered that her window had been opened and her laptop had been taken out through the window.  The person had dragged one of our trashcans over to her window in order to reach in and grab the computer.  It was pretty jarring to all of us that something like this could happen when so many of us were home, but it definitely was a huge wake up call.
 
Still pretty shaken, when our upstairs housemates decided to throw a party in our shared basement on Saturday, we made sure to lock all our individual bedroom doors, with our laptops and wallets inside.  Unfortunately, our upstairs housemates didn’t do the same.  We tried to only invite people we know, but in typical BC fashion, there ended up being tons of friends of friends there, and our housemates ended up getting $240 stolen out of their wallets, which were in their unlocked rooms.
 
The truth is, and not to sound like a total cliché (or worse, like your mom), you really never can be too careful.  My advice to anyone living off-campus is to lock your windows whenever you aren’t in your room.  Lock your room if you’re having people over.  And keep your wallets and laptops away from the windows all the time.  I know this is stuff you’ve heard, but it’s a little too easy to think that it can’t happen to you.  And trust me it can!  For all those underclassmen who are planning on living off campus junior year, don’t forget to think about safety when you are picking out your apartment or house— consider what floor you’re on, if your windows and bedrooms lock, and how safe the area is that you are living in! Otherwise, living off campus is a dream come true and tons of fun, just don’t go lax on the details about security!

Photo Source:
http://jehuadonsblog.blogspot.com/2011_04_01_archive.html