Student "edition" found at {csi dot journalspace dot com}.

Maybe I shouldn't have started this blog now, not with everything that's been going on.

One thing that I have kept on the back burner until now - when there is not much to report from the current days - is an incident that happened during the late weeks of the term.

It was when one of my co-teachers, Celia, had a class that ran into the early evening. She had used a laptop and an LCD projector, and she left it there for the technician to take back to the media lab.

Around thirty minutes later though, the head of security approached us in the sports courts (it has a nice ring to it, I think) to ask Celia about the equipment, because it seems that the laptop was missing.

My heart sank at that moment, because - although I have been brought up to think the best of the students - only they would know the worth of a laptop enough to try to swipe it. The construction workers applying finishing touches to one of the upstairs rooms certainly would not attempt it.

At the same time, from the courts we had already seen several of Celia's students walking out of the front stairs to their cars in the parking lot, so I believed it was a lost cause trying to look for it.

The security personnel persevered though, closing off all the exits of the building but one, and searching everyone who passed that way. At the same time people were scouring the halls.

Eventually it was found, at the top of the stairs to the roofdeck. The head of security even tried to wait in hiding for the perpetrator to return, but they didn't.

I modified my theory that there were probably at least two people involved in the heist, one acting as a lookout while the other brought the portable computer out of the room when the coast was clear.

The lookout also gave advance warning when the bags were being searched, making it another lucky break that they did not have a large bag with them at the time the crime was committed.

I'm also glad they didn't get away with it, because security measures would have gotten much stricter around here if it had, and they would be the ones most inconvenienced.

A funny epilogue to the story though is that some weeks later, the student theater group was going to use the laptop and the sound system in the auditorium in the evening after the Society of Young Educators held a trivia contest.

The people who brought the equipment up also took along the projector used, even though they themselves were not going to use it. And we left the projector in the auditorium afterwards, although we brought down the PA system and the laptop to the faculty room for safe keeping.

Early the next day, one of the technicians went to the faculty room to retrieve the equipment, and as I was telling him where the projector was, he interrupted me with the correct location.

Fast forward to lunch time. There are two security guards outside the faculty room talking to one of the YES officers. They are still at it when I walk in and out again minutes later, but now joined by the YES faculty adviser, who stops me and asks me about the projector.

I told him what we did, but it seems it was the other technician who was looking for it, not the one I talked to that morning. Seems the lack of communication - as well as paranoia from the incident before, was on their part.

And this is where session number 743 gets returned to the media lab. Class dismissed.