RMs to enforce door-locking policy
Starting today, resident mentors in all residence halls on campus will be making routine checks to make sure students are locking their doors.
“Residence hall staff will be walking throughout the building checking doors and locking them if no one is in the apartment,” Housing Director Andrew Fink said.
Campus-wide lock checks are routinely carried out during the fall semester, Fink said, as many new students forget to keep their doors locked.
University Housing made the decision to enforce regular lock checks Spring semester as well in response to three theft incidences reported at South Quad and East Quad over the past three weeks. On Jan. 29, a cell phone was taken from an apartment common area between 2:30 a.m. and noon. Earlier that day, a laptop was taken from a resident’s bedroom.
The following weekend, on Feb. 4, a wallet and an iPod touch were stolen from the same bedroom. The victims’ doors were unlocked in all three cases, which are still under investigation by USC police.
“We asked [our housing partners] to make sure that all of the professional staff are advising residents to lock doors at all times, even if they’re only gone for a few minutes,” associate director of USC’s Department of Law Enforcement and Safety Eric Grabski said. “When a door is unsecure, it’s very easy for someone to walk in and take something.”
University Housing and USC police are working on promoting safe habits to prevent further thefts. Fink advises students to refrain from leaving their doors propped open and allowing unknown persons to follow them into their building. Both Fink and Grabski also advise students to immediately call the police to report any suspicious behavior around their dorms.
“Any help we can get we appreciate,” Grabski said. “If you see anything, immediately let us know and give us a description of the person involved and their direction of travel. We would much rather show up and it turns out to be nothing than not get called and then something gets stolen.”