<p>Is there a way to lock up valuable items in a student's dorm room...referring mainly to a computer or camera equipment, when out for example on a weekend night at some event.</p>
<p>Well, your room itself will lock. You mean like to keep stuff safe from your roommate?</p>
<p>you can get a physical lock/chain, but generally if you lock your room (and usually even if you don’t) your stuff will be fine.</p>
<p>Here at Tufts, we’re all about mugging you if you step off campus. We don’t really do stealing from dorms.</p>
<p>Get collegestudentinsurance (csi). Try a search here on cc for it. For about $95, you get $4k-$5k of coverage with a $25 deductible. Great peace of mind.
The concern isn’t so much roommates as a herd of people they may bring into the room when you aren’t there. Just put your stuff away, don’t leave valuables just laying out.</p>
<p>Lol speaking of which, some ~40 year old townies piggybacked into a dorm with me yesterday and started stealing stuff from Jumbo Drop. It was one of the funniest things I’ve seen at Tufts.</p>
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The problem with living in a double is that you cannot guarantee the security of the stuff in your room by just locking it. I suggest buying a laptop lock and a safe of some sort for your camera equipment.</p>
<p>Yes, I agree, not so worried about the dorm roommate but rather as you said, the potential “herd!” I like the suggestion about College student insurance and will check into it. Will also check laptop lock. Am curious to hear about the mugging however! (:-)Snarf?) And what is the Jumbo Drop??</p>
<p>Jumbo Drop are big boxes they put out in each dorm at the end of every year to collect stuff that people don’t want anymore, but isn’t yet busted enough to be garbage. Tufts takes all the stuff and nominally gives some of it to charity, but most of the stuff ends up getting sold for discount prices back to students at a giant yard sale at the beginning of the next term. In practice, only very bulky or particularly undesirable items actually make it into Tufts’ hands, because students pick through it first, taking whatever stuff is cool. Some students view the Jumbo Drops as little bargain basement stores, and will actually jump into the box to better hunt through it.</p>
<p>That’s about as close as we get to stealing from dorms though - the incidence of on-campus crime is really quite low.</p>
<p>Now off-campus: it would be a lie to claim we didn’t have a bit of a problem with townies mugging students if they’re walking alone late at night off-campus. There hasn’t been a incident for a while, but there are generally 2-5 such incidents per semester. Seems like no matter how many kids get robbed, some kids *still[/] think it’s a good idea to be walking by yourself off-campus at two in the morning.</p>
<p>Okay I learned something new…“townies” is term that I have never heard before…Good to know dorm theft is rare! Jumbo boxes…love the idea of recycling…it’s good! Snarf…have there been violent incidents, beyond
the mugging?</p>
<p>No, not recently anyway. The muggings always proceed without injury (in one infamous mugging, the student being mugged requested his cell phone SIM card back so that he would still have all his numbers - the muggers agreed) and beyond that there isn’t much crime.</p>
<p>Besides the occasional mugging (which really only happens to people who aren’t being careful - all you have to do is not be alone off-campus late at night), the only memorable crime incident was in 2007. A Somerville serial rapist assaulted five women, including one Tufts student. The rapist got caught and is serving 15 years.</p>
<p>Geez, now it seems like Tufts is just full of criminals. I bet we have a lower rate of victimization than most urban schools.</p>
<p>well I appreciate the honesty…and “urban” is the operative word here…so I think of urban crime and awareness as being distinct…just good to know.</p>