<p>Hey Everyone,</p>
<p>I'll be a college freshman next fall, and wanted to get your feedback on dorming. My parents are a bit worried because they always hear from friends how people always break into other students dorms and steal items. It's also a concern about having these problems with your roommate.</p>
<p>I just wanted to get some feedback from some current college students here. Have you guys had a serious problem when it came to this, along with feedback on how to avoid it?</p>
<p>If you lock your door when you leave your room, and if your roommate does the same, you will be fine.</p>
<p>At my school, theft doesn’t happen that often. Usually when it does, it’s when some people living on the first floor of a building keeps their door unlocked or has their window wide open without a screen. The large large majority of people here never have things stolen from them. So basically, keep your door/bike locked and you’ll be totally fine.</p>
<p>As long as you and your roommates always keep your doors locked you should be fine. What I learned from the university police while taking a self-defense class was that people will often go into rooms that are unlocked…if someone’s inside, they say excuse me and claim they were looking for someone else who lives in the building, and if no one’s there they steal any valuables they can.</p>
<p>Bikes are often frequently stolen around here even if you lock them up so that is a pretty common crime. Someone I know actually locked their bike to a sign post and the thief removed the sign completely in order to steal the bike!</p>
<p>Yes, one of my room mates has an issue with leaving the door open at times and it bothers me. I live in a triple and were constantly telling him to close it all the way. The worst part is that our room window is literally next to the street where it can easily be accessed if isn’t locked.
3 weeks ago a room was robbed while the resident in there was held down by the robbers, only because they had an acquittance that let them in which worried me a bit.</p>
<p>Acquaintances being let into the building is definitely a serious problem, so be careful not to let anyone in if you don’t know that they live there. Unfortunately at my school a girl was raped in her own dorm room while she slept by an acquaintance her roommate let in. In this case it was reported and the rapist plead guilty but who knows how often this happens and isn’t reported. And sadly he only got 10 years of probation but no jail time. Freaks like him deserve life in prison…</p>
<p>It’s extremely important to be aware of these kinds of issues and make sure your roommates are as well so that they understand the importance of keeping your doors locked and being careful about who you let in.</p>
<p>My boyfriend and I frequently forgot to lock out doors, and even so nothing ever got stolen.
However, someone else in my building got their flat screen stolen. I think we just got lucky.</p>
<p>
Exactly. We always lock ours if we’re leaving pretty much…I don’t lock mine always if I’m just running down to the bathroom (but my roommate does…even to go to the bathroom, or even to empty the trash I think down the hallway…yeah), but we definitely lock it if we’re leaving to go to another floor/basement/laundry or out of the building. Always. Just lock it and you’ll be fine, and make sure your roommate does the same. Have a talk with them about locking the door and hopefully your roommate will agree with it! I don’t know people who have had things stolen out of their rooms when they don’t lock it at my school, but I know it happens more often at some schools. All our dorms are locked and you can only get into your own dorm, where some schools I know they can get into any dorm with their key, or even just walk in without a key during certain hours, but ours are always locked and only have the key to your own dorm, so that helps keep some people out at least that they can’t just walk in easily.</p>
<p>Lock your door and you should be fine. Don’t take anything too valuable or irreplaceable with you either, just in case your roommates friends have sticky fingers.</p>
<p>In my dorm, things like laptops get left out in common areas all the time and are never stolen. But God help you if you leave out plastic utensils or duct tape…</p>
<p>Yes lock your door, hide your valuables, just don’t leave them sitting in the open. A friend of mine brought a inexpensive Brinks plastic suitcase, left his bundle of money it, and handcuffed it to the metal pole in the room. Thus even with it locked someone cant just take it out. Theft wasn’t a big issue where I lived thankfully. In fact at the end of the spring semester me and our roomates door was named “Door always being unlocked”, everyone knew everyone on our floor and we had a front desk by the entrance. Thus if anyone out of place entered they would be spotted.</p>
<p>Yes, it’s a problem. Laptops seem to be far and away the most common target, since almost everyone has one and they’re highly valuable, easy to carry, and much more likely to be left out in the open.</p>
<p>If your parents are concerned, have them purchase a CSI or NSSI dorm insurance policy. The deductible is low ($50 or less) and the policy covers more than their home insurance policy such as accidental damage to a laptop or PC.</p>
<p>Their homeowner’s insurance will usually cover your dorm contents but the deductible is usually high ($500 - $1000+) and if they make a claim due to you having stuff stolen, their policy premiums will skyrocket.</p>
<p>My roommate had a bad habit of never closing the door completely when she left the suite and it drove me crazy. We usually left our door open when we were all there, though. People (myself included on occasion) would leave laptops in the study room or TV room for a few minutes and nothing went missing.
It’s just a matter of being careful and knowing your surroundings. I’d never leave a bike unlocked and you should always lock your door. At my school, our ID cards were our keys and the system could tell who went in and when. Just don’t take your great grandmother’s heirloom jewelry or irreplaceable valuables and you should be fine.</p>
<p>Make sure you lock your doors. My school also has drawers where you can lock up your most valuable stuff. For my laptop and stuff, I have one of those cords that you use to lock up your laptop, and thus can leave it out.</p>
<p>Nope. I always take my laptop with me, which is the only thing on my side of the room that’s even worth stealing. I know my roommate wouldn’t steal, since I’ve left my laptop in the room before, but she’s also easily absentminded and can forget to lock our suite door. The door to our bedroom also self-locks, but sometimes my roommate just forgets to close it and instead leaves it open. I usually leave for class before she does and lock all the doors before leaving, and sometimes come back to find the front door and the door to my room open, and all my roommates have already left (two roommates are in the other bedroom).</p>
<p>At least from what I’ve seen, you should be totally fine if you just lock your door whenever you go somewhere. Even though there are some immature college kids, and stealing occurs often on a lot of campuses, it mostly occurs with bikes or longboards, because you can just walk up to a bike and act as if it’s your own, or something. You’re only going to look suspicious if you make a big scene about it. If you’re worried about things being stolen, then just talk to your roommate about it when you get to campus, and agree to ask before taking things, not touch each other’s stuff, etc. I think it depends on the people on your floor and how they are. Everyone on my floor is really chill and trustworthy, and there are times when even some people will leave their doors open for hours when they’re not there, although I wouldn’t recommend that.</p>
<p>I don’t really worry. I live on a higher floor in a residential hall that’s on campus, and you need your ID card and/or stairwell keys to get there. Our door is open a lot and neither my roommates nor I lock our laptops. However, we do close the door whenever none of us are in the room, unless we’re just in the bathroom. I suppose someone could come to our floor and take stuff, but that hasn’t happened to anyone…yet.</p>
<p>Lock your door and dont keep valuables in plain sight when they are not on you</p>
<p>A story I totally forgot about, on the importance of locking your door. We pretty often wouldn’t lock the door if one of us wear in there, including if we stepped out for a quick second. When I wasn’t there one weekend, my roommate went to bed with the door unlocked. Around 3, a guy come stumbling in, feeling his was on the ground, slurry asking “Where is the float?!” and kind of pushed him out of the room. Turns out it was a friend of the guy 2 doors down, they wear all drunk forgot about him and had a bed float in their room for him… Good unlocked door times.</p>