Bakersfield College was the victim of theft sometime between Feb. 6-8. The theft included thousands of dollars lost because 6 iMacs were stolen from the Fine Arts building, yet students were completely uninformed of this major breach in security. The last BC Alert students have received was on Jan. 30, when a call was made about an individual with a handgun on campus. There was no armed assailant on campus then, but BC still informed the student community of this incident.
The theft over the Feb. 6 weekend was not the first theft that occurred in the FA building, yet students never received an alert. Even if the theft is part of an ongoing investigation, students still have the right to know that several burglaries have occurred on campus. All BC had to do was send out a short email stating that burglaries have occurred on campus and nothing more could be said because it is an ongoing investigation. Instead, BC has left students in the dark. The main way students learned of the theft was by entering FA 10, the classroom where the theft took place, and noticing six computers missing from the classroom.
Students who had work on those computers could not even know that their work was lost until stepping into the classroom. Faculty, staff and administration were not officially informed of the theft until 2:40 p.m. on Feb. 9. Other alerts have been sent the same day of the incident and the entire BC community receives these alerts. Even employees of BC received late notice of the theft and should have been informed about it sooner.
According to the Bakersfield College 2014 Annual Campus Security and Fire Safety Report, by law BC is required to release “timely warnings to the campus community
about crimes that pose an ongoing threat to students and employees, and to post a public crime log.” The suspect of the burglaries has yet to be apprehended meaning this crime poses an ongoing threat to the BC community. If this remains an ongoing threat, why hasn’t BC sent out any alert to students? According to Christopher Counts, director of the Department of Public Safety, a pry bar type instrument was used to break a glass door of the FA building. This type of tool could be used as a potential weapon against others, yet students were not sent any information regarding the suspect and his break-in tool of choice.
Public Safety could defend their actions and say that students did not need to receive an alert because each incident on campus is reviewed on a case-by-case basis but this is an unsolved crime that has affected the BC community. Some sort of alert should have obviously been sent to students, regardless of how vague the alert would have been. According to the report, burglaries are one of several crimes that are “usually” perceived as crimes that deserve a timely warning notice. Yet, in this instance, none were sent.
Although this crime is still under investigation, a notice should have been sent to students because now, all they can do is speculate. Concerns may be increased because students are left to their imagination to figure out what happened to the computers. Other students may rely on what faculty members tell them, but, because the incident becomes a game of “he-said she-said,” facts could be missed and ultimately this theft could become legendary and exaggerated because there wasn’t a complete, reliable alert that informs the public. More information should have been provided to the public by this public institution, and yet, too much information remained private.