Posts Tagged ‘Security’

Local Elections

Posted by Chris Given on Monday, August 17th, 2009

You should do this.

Something important

Late last week, Ken Cooper from Security sent out a ‘Security Alert’ to the first-year class that pretty strongly discouraged them from voting locally. Professor Jonathan Becker, who coordinates many of the get-out-the-vote efforts at Bard, wrote a response that is worth reposting here in full.

Dear Students:

I am writing to you on behalf of election.bard.edu, which runs many of the election related activities at Bard.

You might have noticed a note from my friend and colleague Ken Cooper on the relationship between jury duty and voter registration. As you will come to see, Ken is the master of the quirky email, for which he has a cult following on campus. However, in this instance I thought it would be helpful to write a follow-up on this subject to provide a bit more context.

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Soundcrew Stuff Goes Missing

Posted by Chris Given on Saturday, July 25th, 2009

No, not a real picture of the culprit

No, not a real picture of the culprit

In the time since everyone left for the summer, there have been a spate of burglaries around campus. Most notably, someone stole a number of flatscreen TVs from Woods Studio, and two large Bose subwoofers in the Chapel disappeared on the same day, their security chains severed.

But this week, I learned of a new set of thefts – this time from the Student Association.

The first is from Soundcrew, the organization that runs audio for events organized by student clubs, which apparently left some quantity of gear in an unlocked closet in Manor at the end of the semester. The semi-valuable equipment waited around for about two weeks, before wandering off in the hands of some opportunistic thief. Missing gear includes two mixing boards, leaving Soundcrew with only one tiny mixer and a dead, large one. Also lost were five microphones, two speakers, and the various bits and pieces used to hook it all up. This leaves Soundcrew crippled, without enough equipment to run many of the events that clubs will want to throw.

I’m currently working with AV to inventory Soundcrew’s remaining gear, an unfortunately large chunk of which is broken. I’m also looking into ways to acquire the bare essentials now to get Soundcrew through the first several weeks of the semester.

On a side note, Soundcrew needs a head – preferably a responsible and organized person to ensure that this sort of thing doesn’t happen. Got audio experience? Let me know!

Soundcrew’s loss was not the only blow to fall this summer. I learned last Wednesday that SMOG had also been broken into. Someone broke the two rear windows, pushed in the grates, and proceeded to make off with SMOG’s mixing board, potentially along with other gear that had not been properly inventoried. There is now a severe shortage of mixers on campus. On the upside, a complete and working, albeit vintage, system was recently given to the college. Perhaps this gear will find a home at SMOG.

As for the people responsible, campus gossip pins a group of Aramark employees. However, our chances of recovering the gear look slim.