my view on theft
mike nelson, first year representative


This is an indirect letter to all the kleptomaniacs in engineering. I don't know why you would steal from your school. Sure it is easy to steal from the labs, but there is a little thing called the Engineering Code. Actually there isn't, but if there was, it would say don't steal from your school. It's just not crickets, baby. If the theft of the computers wasn't done by an engineer, that means that an engineer either gave access to a person and didn't notice him/her walking out of here with a computer, or they left the door propped open over the weekend. Simple rule of thumb, if no-one else is in the pit shut the door. That was the old rule of thumb. Now it is "Don't open the damn door at the back of the pit, or Jeff Robinson will yell at you, and probably make you cry." As far as that goes, I don't like having the door shut. It means I have to walk all the way around the building to the main non-secured door. That is a big deal for all engineers who park in the bottom lot so that they can get their easy access to the engineering area. Now we might as well be Comp. Sci., having to walk around the building and such. We lose part of our exclusivity.

Anyway, back to my point. I myself have felt the urge to steal or "borrow" things from time to time. Here is my personal secret keep me from stealing things: I might get caught. Or I know that I would probably be bad at theft (I might get my hand caught in the cookie jar, or the equivalent). Maybe this is a little simplified from the Judaio-Christian view of Thou Shalt not Steal, but it works for me. If you have taken a moral philosophy course, you might know that not stealing is good because if everyone stole all the time, then no-one would have any stuff. Do you see what I'm getting at.

Those were just a few tips to avoid stealing. Actually I'm surprised that they didn't offer some kind of deal like "If you return the computers now, there will be no repercussions, except we'll expell your *ss and press charges." Or something like that. I hope that this article will either compel the thief to come forward, or stop stealing so that I don't have to walk all the way around the building to get into the Pit.



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