My School Was Robbed

It’s funny how things in the universe seem to match up sometimes.

Yesterday, me and my Principal spoke about how we need better security for the computer lab before we can put computers in there.

I went home and made some changes to a document detailing things I can assist with. The very first item: “Get the Computer Lab Running”.

This morning at school, we were greeted by this:

Welcome to our computer lab. Luckily, there were only a few computers that were setup, so it could have been much, much worse.

This is the 3rd computer lab burglary. In the past few years, the lab has been cleaned out twice. The worst part about it is that everyone thinks some students are involved in these burglaries, at least in terms of communicating information about the location of the computers. The criminals didn’t trash the place to find things, they already knew where everything was.

It’s not the happiest news.

They came in through the roof, obviously. This is how they got in:

They also went for the photocopier as well.

Luckily, they lacked the proper knowledge of pulleys and inclined planes to actually get it out. That’s what you get for not paying attention in Physical Science.

This is all quite discouraging. I’ve heard over and over again that you basically have to seal things in concrete rooms if they are valuable. But it is a whole different feeling to actually see it. It’s even more depressing when you consider that the computers were maybe 2 years old, and really not worth much at all sold used or in parts. The street value is much lower than the value they were providing to the school.

Obviously, there are some incredibly poverty stricken people in South Africa, who could easily double their annual income with a couple of computers sold on the black market. But somehow, I doubt the money will go to feed children.