Thieves get gear from student union; nothing from student paper

KAMLOOPS – Independent student organizations are being encouraged to review their own security procedures after an extensive theft and another attempted break in at Thompson Rivers University this month. 

Roughly $4,000 worth of gear was stolen from the Thompson Rivers University Student Union more than a week ago and an attempt was made to break into the student newspaper last week.

Student union spokesperson Nathan Lane says the student union was broken into sometime last weekend, either Saturday, March 5 or Sunday, March 6. He says equipment used for presentations was stolen, though the office suffered no damage.

According to Lane, campus security investigated and have passed information on to the police who opened a file on the incident. He says the student union and security are currently trying to figure out how the thief got into the secured student union building.

On Wednesday, March 9, or the morning of Thursday, March 10, there was also an attempt to break into the university’s student newspaper, The Omega, says editor-in-chief Sean Brady. The office’s door frame was damaged in the attempt, he says, but the door held, and has since been repaired.

“The metal plate was damaged. It was just bent in.” Brady says. “The door was scraped and the frame was scraped.”

Brady says while the two incidents happened close together, there's no evidence linking the two incidents.

Jacquetta Goy, the university’s director of security, says the school is looking into the incidents, but there haven’t been any others recently. She says while they are on university grounds, both offices are part of independent organizations and responsible for reporting the incidents to police if they wish to, but the university is double checking its records for any patterns or information. The incident at the Omega was not captured on camera, but Goy it says might not have been useful anyways.

“Even if you capture an image it doesn’t mean you catch the person,” she says. “First look at basics of security procedures, sometimes an alarm is better or regular patrols.”

To contact a reporter for this story, email Brendan Kergin at bkergin@infonews.ca or call 250-819-6089. To contact an editor, email mjones@infonews.ca or call 250-718-2724.