Discussion: stolen marker

I wonder if housekeeping might have confiscated it. Have you called anyone at Jayhawker Towers?

The KU police officer was going to check with the Jayhawk Towers office on Sunday. I hadn't thought about checking during the week.

I'm skeptical that housekeeping would have been out between 10-11:30 on Sunday morning (when the marker was taken). But, I can see some resident taking it and then throwing it out. When I looked around the Towers, I checked in the trash cans and behind bushes and places I figured someone might trash something.

We've only lost one to theft in the four years we've been doing SI. I have no idea why someone would take one as it's absolutely useless for anything other than its intended purpose, but some people just take things. I know one guy who is a bona-fide kleptomaniac. It's just wierd to watch him take stuff that he has no use for and doesn't even seem to want. It's just not nailed down so he feels compelled to snatch it.

Your friend didn't happen to be hanging around in Lawrence last weekend?

There's the rent-a-cop patho-psychology that may at time explain stolen controls. I don't know if anyone around Jayhawker Towers or the Daisy Hill area would have a job like that though. Those aren't private dorms, are they?

I've set controls near a forest service campground that had a "campground host" and in the process lost several controls one time. The "host" person is hired to live at the campground (usually in a van) and is supposed to charge for people to use campground sites. It's possible that "hosts" of this type run into bad characters in the course of their duties. Unfortunately, they also have the type of job that can lead some individuals on a power trip. They can react to the sight of a control as an affront to their authority and see it as their job to remove the perceived "threat" (ie. control), as petty as that sounds.

My favorite (though I wasn't thrilled at the time) was a meet I put on at Tower Grove. As it's an urban park, we were using our wooden stakes rather than control bags. There was also a wicken event of some sort going on. The park ranger didn't much like the witches and had told them in no uncertain terms that they had to keep to the area they had reseved. When he saw the wooden stakes, he started pulling them all up figuring they must be some sort of black magic thing. There were a LOT of DNF's that day.

Eric, I lol'd at that. Though I can see how at the time it wasn't funny.