TI-83 bandits rip off fellow students

Where only first names appear, names have been changed to protect the identities of the sources.

Some thieves steal for the thrill of it. Others steal to live. And some, like Ben, a junior, don't really know why they do it and don't really care. "There is no point," he says, shrugging. He admits he's stolen some seven graphing calculators since his freshman year and says, "I have like six of them at home."

Ben's apparent purposelessness may be unique, but his calculator thievery is not. According to an informal Silver Chips poll of 100 students taken on Feb 28, 39 percent of Blazers have had at least one graphing calculator, which can cost nearly $100, stolen while on Blair property. Twenty-four percent admit they have stolen a calculator from a fellow student, and, according to Blair security, at least one student has been arrested for stealing graphing calculators.

Snatched

In her first year at Blair, junior Elizabeth Inkellis lost her priciest school supply to a sneaky Blazer. "I was at lunch," she recalls, "and I put my backpack down. I turned around for five minutes to talk to my friend, and I turned back and my whole backpack was gone." Inkellis later found her backpack discarded on a back stairway. "It had all been rifled through," she says, "but nothing was gone except for my calculator. And it cost $90 to buy a new one."

Unlike Inkellis, sophomore Abimbola "Bumi" Dada, another victim of calculator thievery, was able to act quickly enough to expose the guilty party. Her graphing calculator was stolen from her purse during a tech education class last semester. After realizing that her purse was significantly lighter, Dada alerted her teacher to the theft, and he conducted a class-wide backpack search. "I was literally crying," says Dada, "because my parents had just bought it."

When Dada recognized that her new calculator was being removed from a student's backpack, she says the perpetrator "said his mom bought it for him the night before." The fact that Dada's initials adorned the calculator did not stop him. "He said it was his initials," says Dada. "But his initials are ‘C.D.'"

Dada's calculator thief was sent to administration, where he was asked if the calculator belonged to him. According to Dada, who accompanied him, he answered, "I don't know." The thief was, Dada says, subsequently suspended.

Supply and demand

Unfortunately for their victims, other, more-adept calculator snatchers lurk inside Blair's walls. Marcus, a junior who's relatively new to the practice, says he's purloined two graphing calculators so far. He sold the first to a friend for $10 and is looking for a buyer for his most recent prize, a TI-83 Plus. Marcus casually shares his thieving procedure. "First you got to stoke out potential people you're going to take it from," he explains. "You just look for people who leave their calculator laying around or leave their backpack with their calculator in it. I walk over, and I just take it." Marcus says he doesn't feel guilty about his method of money-making. It all seems fair because, he says, "mine got stolen once."

Other calculator bandits relate to Marcus' cash-driven thievery. Joey, also a junior, says he has stolen three calculators and sold two of them so far. "It's not hard to steal calculators," he says. And with his selling price of $20 a calculator, all profit, Joey doesn't bother to consider the students he rips off. "If they leave it around, then apparently they don't want it," he says, shrugging.

Students can find buyers for their stolen wares off-campus as well. A-1 Pawnbrokers, whose Yellow Book advertisement brags "Immediate Cash," will pay about $10 for a graphing calculator, according to one employee. The same employee, who estimates that A-1 has approximately three to four graphing calculators in stock at any given time, says that the majority of their calculator-toting patrons are "probably students."

Safe and secure?

Though he lacks the monetary motivation, Ben shows the same lack of remorse and empathy as his fellow calculator bandits. The only reason he offers to explain his apparently purposeless pilfering is that the calculators "are just there, and nobody claims them." Ben says he finds the "unclaimed" calculators "in lockers, backpacks, on tables, in classrooms, whatever." He insists, "I'm not even really stealing them. I'm just picking them up."

Security guard Harry Wacke says fewer thefts would occur if students guarded their belongings more carefully. "If it's yours and you bought it, then you need to hold onto it," he says. "Most of the stuff that gets stolen, it's because they left it around."

However, Blair does hold strict penalties for students caught stealing. Blazer thieves face a ten-day suspension, and if their exploits are dubbed "major theft" by Blair security, the police are notified. According to security team leader Edward Reddick, a student recently caught with three to four stolen calculators was turned over to county police on Feb 13. Reddick says it was the first time a Blair student has been arrested for in-school calculator theft.

Despite the possible consequences, calculator bandits are still doing their thing throughout Blair. Marina, a junior, has had graphing calculators stolen from her three different times. "In ninth grade," she says, "twice my calculator was stolen out of my bag in aerobics class. Once, it was stolen at lunch, but I had left it on the table, so that was my fault."

Marina says she bought new calculators after the first two thefts, but the third burglary was the last straw. "The third time, I got sick of it," she says, "and I just got my friend who had stolen calculators to give me one of his."