Three data projectors were stolen. Each cost $3,500 to replace. That means Guilford College is out $10,500 – only a little less than what one student pays for a year’s room and board.
The data projectors, used to view Internet, Power Point, and other media presentations, were stolen from rooms 202 and B13 in Bauman and from Dana 215. The theft of Bauman’s projectors, located only a few rooms away from the Office of Public Safety, was reported on Aug. 29. The Dana projector was reported stolen on Sept. 20.
“We’re not alone,” said Anne Lundquist, Dean for Campus Life. “UNCG, A&T, and Greensboro College have all had similar, high-technology things stolen.”
Unfortunately, this is not Guilford’s first theft. Laptops and computer equipment have been stolen from Guilford and the other colleges before.
“It’s not just these data projectors,” said Lundquist. “We all made reports [to the Greensboro Police Department], and that put the police into thinking there was some kind of pattern.
“Most of the things were taken from behind locked doors, without any sign of forcible entry,” Lundquist said. “So the GPD had an investigation team going and also worked with local pawn shops. We had serial numbers on our [projectors], so they can put two and two together. And they have.”
The GPD recovered the stolen projectors earlier this week and have arrested several people, though the investigation is not yet complete.
The theft, however, has already done its damage – and not just monetarily.
“It’s a bigger issue than that,” said Ken Gilmore, Chair of the Political Science department, who teaches in Bauman 202. “It’s not just disrupting the finances of the college, but the education of the people in it … It’s harming the education of hundreds of people.”
“Someone is robbing us of our own education,” said sophomore Vita Generalova. “All this money is going to replace that, and now the school has to make sacrifices.”
All three projectors have been replaced with newer models, a fact Director of Information Technology and Services Leah Kraus takes comfort in.
“If you want to be kind of bizarre about it,” Kraus said, “it’s allowed us to put in new equipment – if you want to look at the positive side. I would have liked it to be under different circumstances.”
The Departments of Public Safety, Campus Life, and IT&S are now working to ensure that similar incidents do not happen again.
They will examine people’s access to high-technology classrooms and increase the accountability of keys. The new projectors have additional security and locking devices. Public Safety officers will also adapt their rounds in response to the theft.
“It makes me sad really that we have to deal with this,” said Lundquist. “If we are dealing with outside people, where people are coming on to campus and doing things, it makes me kind of scared. And if it’s inside people, it makes me equally disturbed. So there’s not really a good outcome.