Several houses on the Row have reported burglaries in the past week, resulting in the loss of thousands of dollars’ worth of student belongings, including laptops and iPods.

The first reported break-in occurred around 3 a.m. on Saturday, when four unidentified men entered a first-floor room of Storey House, according to resident Chris Jenkins ’13.

According to Storey resident assistant Andy Hiller ‘11, the four men were able to enter the room through an open door, which accesses the Tresidder parking lot, after it had been propped open to keep the students’ room cooler.

Jenkins was asleep when the men entered his room. His two roommates were in the kitchen.

“I had been asleep for a few hours when four men came into the room,” Jenkins said. “I heard them and got out of bed and grabbed hold of one of them, but they got away.”

The intruders stole an XBox and Jenkins’ laptop, as well as his two roommates’ laptops.

On Saturday evening, residents at 680 Lomita also experienced a burglary. Community manager Alexei Dunaway ’11 said two first-floor rooms were broken into.

Among the items stolen were bottles of scotch, an iPod and Engineering 60 textbook. Dunaway said these were particularly interesting items to steal, given that there were five computers between the two rooms. He said the choice of stolen items could suggest the identity of the perpetrator.

“I mean, who steals an E-60 book?” Dunaway said. “That makes me think it’s Stanford people.”

The most recent alleged burglary occurred on or before Monday afternoon at Kairos, when someone entered the room of kitchen manager Michelle Mederos ’11 and stole her netbook and iPod, Mederos said. She echoed Dunaway’s observation that the burglars selected an unusual assortment of belongings to steal.

“I had a lot of other valuable things laying out,” Mederos said. “I had a desktop monitor, a nice 35mm camera and jewelry, but none of that was taken. It’s really sort of obscure. It makes me believe that it’s some student somewhere who just wants to sneak in and sneak out and knows campus well enough to do that.”

Despite the recent string of Row break-ins, Police Lt. Rich Cinfio of the Department of Public Safety (DPS) said the incidents are not yet indicative of a larger trend and are all “under investigation.”

“There’s not a concentrated pattern of crime on campus,” he said.

According to DPS, there have been 79 burglaries on campus thus far in 2010. DPS considers each victim of theft to constitute a separate burglary, for a total of 49 incidents since January.

Nonetheless, the recent burglaries have led some students to call for greater security measures and the installation of more security cameras.

“We understand that there are a lot of ways to get into a building, but we don’t understand why there’s no security camera in Tresidder parking lot,” Jenkins said. “There’s nothing stopping someone from breaking a window.”

Cinfio said security cameras “can be a good tool” to assist in crime prevention, but he said the addition of cameras to that area would be problematic.

“The problem is, who is going to monitor these security cameras?” Cinfio said. “They’re not practical in terms of responding to a crime in progress, and also, for parking lots we would need video cameras sensitive to low-light situations, which are very expensive.”

Instead, campus police and Student Housing urge students and Row staff to take preventative measures to help keep possible intruders out.

“It’s important to be aware of your surroundings, and challenge someone who looks suspicious by asking them what they’re doing there,” Cinfio said. “It’s also important to lock your doors and windows and secure your valuables.”

Rodger Whitney, executive director of Student Housing, agreed that students must play an active role in keeping the residences safe throughout the year.

“Incidences of unauthorized entrance are always a good time to remind residents of the key part they play in security,” Whitney wrote in an e-mail to The Daily.

According to Whitney, this includes being continuously aware of who is in their residence, and reporting malfunctioning doors and latches to the emergency maintenance hotline.

Contact Kelsey King at [email protected].