As anyone who has gone to college and lived in a dorm room knows, you’re living in very small quarters with a bunch of other college students in a building that often has pretty relaxed security measures. My college dorm had key-card entry, but that didn’t stop people from propping open the door to let others in, or letting in a stranger who swears they’re just going up to see a friend. Most of the time, these are honest people making honest mistakes but it only takes one thief entering the dorm under false pretenses to cause a lot of havoc and heartbreak.
For example, my brother was hanging around his dorm a few years ago. It was right around Christmas time and people were packing up for the holidays. Amid all the new faces (parents, brothers, cousins) in and out of the dorm, he didn’t notice the man (or woman) who slyly entered his own room and stole both his very new and expensive and laptop computer and iPhone. While no one knows for sure, I’m fairly certain that some unsuspecting parent or student let this thief in to have his pickings of the empty dorm rooms. Pretty scary, huh? Of course, we didn’t know then, but what if we’d just bought a small safe for his room – a place to keep his laptop, his phone and his passport while he wasn’t in the room.
This thief wouldn’t have been able to be quite so sly or sneaky with a heavy safe tucked under his arm or in his knapsack.
The lessons learned were two-fold:
1) computer insurance is essential! (Even amid all these unfortunate events, my brother ended up with an entirely new laptop courtesy of Apple),
2) take precautions. We could have spent $100 on a small safe instead of the potential $1500 to replace a new computer, and $300 for a new iPhone.
Of course, the likelihood of this happening to you are slim, but what if? Do what you need to do to never need to ask yourself what if. Did you ever had anything taken from your dorm room? What do you do to prevent something like this from happening?
