There is no question that the theft of the master keys and the serial thefts of faculty equipment are directly correlated. I still do not have the complete inventory for these thefts, but only 10% of those thefts that have been reported so far were from unlocked offices. Only 15% of all reported thefts occurred before the master keys were stolen in August 2005. In other words, the vast majority of the thefts of faculty computer equipment have occurred from spaces that were supposed to be locked and that were presumed to be locked, but that were never truly locked and that were never truly secured because the master keys were stolen in August 2005 and faculty were not cautioned to that effect.

As a reminder to those who are prone to blame intelligent, mature people like professors for the crimes that have been perpetrated against them, these offices have doors that default to a locked position and thus are almost uniformly locked all day long without any exception unless deliberately forced to be unlocked on very rare occasions. Some of these thefts may be attributed to the misuse of other master keys, such as those that a department secretary would have, but so many of these thefts occurring in buildings like Mark Jefferson, Pray Harrold, and Alexander precisely when the master keys to those very buildings were stolen can only be attributed to the theft of the master keys. It defies logic to contend that these two highly unusual, but exactly contemporaneous, events are uncorrelated.

The email above claims that there was a warning about the theft of the master keys to senior staff members, yet that warning was not necessarily delivered to the faculty or staff most effected by that theft. Most importantly, even if this supposed warning had been delivered, it would only have exasperated the problem. The proposed solution to having both the interior and exterior locks of these buildings compromised is to “shut and lock all interior doors to office suites and individual offices.� What is the use of locking interior spaces when those very locks are compromised no less than the exterior ones? Why focus on changing the exterior locks of these buildings exclusively when the exteriors of the buildings are unlocked most of the day and long into the night anyway?

This so-called warning, a warning that was never properly delivered to those most concerned by the theft of the master keys, would actually increase the false and dangerous illusion of safety in the very interior spaces that have been most compromised by the theft of the master keys.

I am certainly relieved to hear that the administration prioritizes the living spaces of students over the working spaces of faculty, which of course would be my priority as well. Yet if professors are forced to wait in line to have their working spaces secured after the students in dorm rooms have had their living spaces secured, those professors should, at the very least, be warned of their danger in the intervening period. To have professors work in these pseudo-locked spaces entirely oblivious to their real danger is both unconscionable and unlawful. To afterwards blame professors for the very crimes that result from that lack of security, as well as that lack of warning, is doubly unethical.

What is most disconcerting about the email above is that none of the questions that I have asked about the rekeying of the dorm rooms have been answered. We are told that “since August 2005 all of the interior and exterior doors of the resident halls have been rekeyed.� That statement would still be true had the dorm rooms been rekeyed yesterday. We know that the master keys were stolen in August 2005, we know that one student had her dorm room rekeyed about a year later, and we know that the request to rekey dorm rooms was made around the same time: June 2006, almost a full year after the master keys were stolen. Once more, I invite everyone to review the Project Detail Report for the emergency rekeying project that specifies this extremely disturbing timeline of rekeying work initiated and only gradually completed:

http://www.acoykenda.net/masterkeys.pdf

On pages 9-10 , and thence again on page 19, there are requests for that rekeying to be done on all of the apartment and dorm rooms, but only two of those buildings are actually listed as having their rooms rekeyed as of the date of this document (February 13, 2007). Those two dorms are the two honors dorms, Wise and Downing.

Presumably, the work of rekeying began on the other dorms at some point after June 2006, but according to this document, that work was not completed by February 13, 2007. If, as the email above suggests, that work has at last been completed, it would have been finished two years following the original theft of the master keys—two full years without any warning issued to the many students, staff, and faculty that were effected.

If anyone has any questions or concerns about this issue, please feel free to contact me at any time:

acoykenda at comcast.net

Steve, you ask what EMU officials settled with the contractor who was responsible for losing the master keys – settled for $450,000 when the actual costs of rekeying was twice that. Well, those officials must have been, going up the chain of command –

1. Tony Catner, the head of physical plant for years (fired in Jan. 2007).

2. Steve Holda, who as Interim Director of Finance was the de facto VP for Business & Finance (kicked up stairs to another job, same pay, in January 2007 or the previous December).

3. University Counsel Ken McKanders, who is in charge of all legal settlements and disputes for EMU. Still in his job.

4. President John Fallon.

That #1 & #2 no longer have the jobs they held when the bad decisions on the master keys settlement – and the decision NOT to inform faculty – were made is not, I think, related to these fiascos, but to others. Steve failed in his application to become VP, and Tony was ousted for a slew of overdue managerial problems. President Fallon had, for a year and a half previously, defended these subordinates from all criticism, despite poor performance.

The key thing – excuse the pun – is that Pres. Fallon & Mr. McKanders, who share the ultimate responsibility for keeping the facts from the faculty and for the low-ball settlement – remain in their jobs. The lesson here is that the more important your job at EMU, the more acceptable poor performance is.

Knuckle-headed decisions, indeed, Steve. You termed it right. I commend the search committee that selected Ms. Stroh over Mr. Holda, and I commend Ms. Stroh for trying to correct the many problems a broken management system created before she got here; chief among these steps was her termination of Mr Catner’s employment at EMU. But she should look more critically at what she is told by the staff and superiors she inherited.

I am saying this, though. If there were (I’m making these numbers up) 100 police reports filed for thefts last year and “only” 30 of them involved thefts from locked faculty offices, then it would be accurate for Stroh to say “most of the larcenies have occurred because the person left a door unlocked or left their computer sitting unattended on campus.” Still, 30 (or whatever that number is) unforced break-ins into faculty offices is still far too many.

I’m also kind of curious as to what these police reports actually say, and I might ask to see the one that was filed regarding the theft from my office. I think I saw the document last year briefly, and I don’t recall a lot of detail one way or the other about the theft. But maybe I can request this and find out more.

Finally, Stroh says “In a number of police reports, the person reporting the theft stated that a number of other people had keys to the office or that s/he had let others borrow the key.” Well, um, yeah. But that’s because my office needs to be accessible to the department secretaries (who often will leave me deliveries or get things from my office), to ICT folk (who go into my office as little as possible), to cleaning staff, etc. That’s kind of the way an office works, right?

After I was robbed in August 2006, I quite seriously considered installing a deadbolt lock. I had assumed at the time that this would not have gone over well with the powers that be. But I am beginning to think that perhaps this is a solution I should revisit. This would have indeed cut down the number of people who had keys to my office to one.

* I very much appreciate this message and the effort here. It should have probably been sent out about 6 months ago, but better late than never.

* Stroh writes that senior administrators were supposed to let staff know what was going on with these lost keys– “Inform all staff members reporting to them about this incident; Make sure staff working in the building carried proper identification and were ready to produce it, if asked;” etc. To the best of my knowledge, I was never informed about this stuff from senior administrators. I might be wrong, but perhaps Deans and Department Heads just didn’t think that faculty needed to know, counted as “staff members,” etc.

* I know this isn’t Stroh’s fault– it’s before her time– but who’s the knucklehead who settled for $450,000 when EMU had to turn around and add another $450,000 and that still wasn’t enough?

* If the dorms were rekeyed back in August 2005, then the connection between the stolen master key and the Dickenson case is speculative at best.

* I can understand why the administration wanted to hold off on rekeying Mark-Jefferson and Pray-Harrold if they thought money might be coming from the state. But what about thefts from other buildings?

* I’m going to include the passage that KitchKitten deleted because I actually think it doesn’t do much to help potential thieves and it does a lot to indicate what the administration is trying to do here. The passage comes after the sentence “A group consisting of physical plant, information computer technology, and public safety employees met to discuss ways to reduce the amount of office thefts. ” Stroh writes:

“Last fall, our IT department, through the University’s computer refresh program, purchased Computrace for each of the laptop computers. This system, which functions on the premise that the user of the laptop logs onto the internet once a month, will enable the University to trace a stolen
computer. The University has also purchased Stop Tag plates. Each plate
contains a unique ID for that computer; that ID is registered to track
that laptop back to EMU if stolen; the ID plate is impossible to remove
from the computer without leaving a significant mark.

“The decision made at this particular meeting, and in consultation with
others, was to put the Stop Tag on all University laptops and other
office equipment. If you currently have a University laptop that does
not have a Stop Tag on it, you can contact the technology support person
for your area or the Department of Public Safety to get a tag put on
your machine and get it registered.”

Two thoughts on this: first, I think this is a great idea and I would strongly encourage EMU to extend this program beyond laptops to desktop computers as well. After all, the computer that was stolen from my office was a Mac Mini cable-locked down to the desk.

Second, I’d be interested in knowing if there is a way I can get a similar device installed on my privately owned laptop, which I take with me to school all the time?

* My final issue here. Stroh writes: “I am finding that people are
automatically linking the missing keys from August 2005 to the recent
rash of thefts of office equipment particularly laptop computers. I
have been reading the police reports concerning the larceny of these
laptops. While a small number of them appear to be the result of
someone using a key to enter an office, most of the larcenies have
occurred because the person left a door unlocked or left their computer
sitting unattended on campus. In a number of police reports, the person
reporting the theft stated that a number of other people had keys to the
office or that s/he had let others borrow the key.”

I’ve said this all before, but I will say it again here:

– I never EVER NEVER EVER NEVER leave my office unlocked. Not even for a second. Never. Period. Doesn’t happen. I’ve got too much stuff in there to take the risk.

– When the computer was stolen out of my office in August 2006, I was out of the country. This means that the only people who would have been in and out of my office– secretaries and custodial staff, for example– would have locked the door behind them.

– The computer stolen out of my office was CABLE-LOCKED down to the desk and the cable was cut. This was not a “grab-n-dash” sort of thing.

– The department secretary is the one who filed the report because I was just getting back to the U.S. when the theft was discovered. But it was stolen out of my office, and DPS never ever NEVER EVER contacted me about any of this. Now, I wasn’t expecting them show up with a finger-printing kit or whatever, but an iota of an investigation seemed in order to me. I had information I was interested in sharing. For example, because this computer was a server, we know that it appears to have disappeared from the network in the morning on Monday, August 21, 2006. But did DPS ever bother to inquire about something like that? Of course not.

So let’s be careful here about blaming the victim about unlocked doors and such, especially when some of us victims can document the opposite. And while we’re at it, let’s see the administration/institution do some more to prevent these kinds of petty thefts– security cameras, more patrols, rekeyed locks, etc.

Remember, at least in my case, we’re talking about a FACULTY office. This isn’t some study table in the library or the student center, this isn’t a car in a parking lot, this isn’t an open classroom. These thefts are happening out of faculty offices, and I would like to think that my colleagues in the administration would like to see the offices of faculty secure enough for them to do their jobs. To me, that’s a basic working condition issue, probably one that is ripe for a grievance.