Students Complain of Stolen Storage Items

Deanna Dong ’08 of Quincy House, found her 35-inch television in a storage room in the basement of Old Quincy at 2 p.m. last Thursday. When she returned to the room 90 minutes later with friends to lug it to her dorm in New Quincy, the television had vanished, Dong said.

Dong’s story is one of several concerning the disappearance of items that students left in dormitory storage rooms before moving out in the spring. Even though Harvard warns students that the University “assumes no responsibility for loss or damage” of belongings left in summer storage, students in several residential Houses are voicing concerns about insufficient security during the fall move-in period.

Nathan P. Whitfield ’09 of Lowell House said he lost his bowl-shaped papasan chair, finding the identification tag that had once been on the chair lying on the floor of the storage room. But that wasn’t all. “The thing that most concerns me is the fact that in one of the storage rooms my boxes had been ripped open and my stuff had been thrown all over the floor,” he said.

Dong and others said they were concerned that storage rooms were being left unlocked and unattended.

Paul J. Hegarty, superintendent of Leverett House, said he never opens a storage room unless he is sure that there will be a storage monitor present to check identification cards and storage tags.

“Unfortunately,” he said, “there are ways to circumvent the system.” He said that students in the past have switched the storage stickers on items and walked away with someone else’s goods.

Several students interviewed yesterday put the blame on Dorm Crew for not monitoring storage rooms sufficiently during the sometimes-chaotic move-in period. The students reported that storage rooms in Leverett, Lowell, and Quincy Houses were left open with no surveillance.

“Of course, students who get to campus will want to get their stuff out of storage and move in,” Whitfield said. “But sometimes there won’t be anybody from Dorm Crew around to facilitate that. It’s a catch-22.” Whitfield said he worked as a storage monitor for Dorm Crew last year.

Dorm Crew’s head captains, Rosa E. Beltran ’08 and Jordan C. Ford ’08, did not immediately return telephone messages yesterday requesting comment. But Paul T. Mumma ’09, a Dorm Crew captain, said the organization “doesn’t have anything to do” with students losing items in storage. “It’s entirely the responsibility of the House superintendents,” said Mumma, who is also a member of the Crimson editorial board.

Winthrop House Superintendent David Simms, however, said yesterday that he had only received one report of a missing storage item—a television that had been moved during the summer and was later found. He said many of the alleged thefts are simply a result of items being moved in the storage rooms both during the summer and during move-in.

But Dong, the Quincy senior, said her television was clearly stolen.

“If it was an outsider that took the property, then Harvard should step up its security,” Dong said. “If it was actually somebody in the House, that just makes me really sad.”

—Staff writer William M. Goldsmith can be reached at wgoldsm@fas.harvard.edu.