Last Monday in daylight my Phase II four bedroom apartment was burglarized. The culprits made off with a brand new 27″ R.C.A television set, which cost exactly $198.00 of my very own hard earned money (and no it wasn’t purchased with an overpayment check). But this story to The Panther staff is not to whine or complain about my missing TV. It’s to make a formal complaint about the way the situation was handled.
When I walked up to my room and found that the thieves gained entry by force, I immediately called the available extension for campus emergencies 2-911 FOUR TIMES with no answer and then until the line became busy.
After I got through to a dispatcher, she nonchalantly gathered all of my information and informed me that help would be on the way. After about a half hour wait, a university police officer finally showed up and when I asked him what had taken him so long he replied, “What did you expect, I was at lunch in the Waller County Line.” After the official report I was told that there was nothing the university could do about the TV unless they actually saw someone packing a huge 27″ television set around… yeah right.
This university has got to implement some sort of organized crime watch or some type of plan to alleviate this problem because these break-ins are occurring during the middle of the day and the situation has begun to get out of hand. According to the annual report conducted by the university on campus crime statistics, in the 2004-2005 school year, there were 99 incidences of burglary in on campus facilities (if this is not alarming then I don’t know what is). I don’t understand how we, as students, could shell out all of this money to attend this so called “institution” and live with the harsh reality that we are having our valuables stolen right from under us whenever some thief feels the need to, and the university can do nothing about it. My question to the reader is “Where are the authorities when you need them?”
Maybe they were harassing some group of young men minding their own business, or perhaps informing students that they can’t park or congregate in certain areas. The Village was a big help as well. After about a full week of trying to contact the general manager about what all they could do to help me, I finally got through to a front desk worker who was extremely rude and put me on hold without notifying me. The general manager informed me that he would review the camera to see if he could catch anything suspicious and return my phone call: I will say that I still haven’t heard back from anyone affiliated with the University Village and here it is about two weeks afterward. To you, the reader of this story, I urge you to be cautious. Always be aware of your surroundings. And to the officials of this university I am deeply saddened by the fact that crime runs freely on this campus and hardly anyone cares enough to eradicate the situation.
-Victimized Student