Students received a blunt reminder of the Bowdoin bubble’s vulnerability last weekend when burglars entered a Harpswell Apartments unit and stole thousands of dollars worth of electronic equipment.

On Saturday evening around 8 p.m., seniors Anthony Todesco, Jack Donovan, Brian Golger and Peter Yasi were in their living room watching television and using their computers, according to Todesco. They opened the unit’s sliding glass door “for a couple of hours” due to the room’s heat.

“There were people outside circulating around because it was a Saturday night, so they would have been able to see inside,” said Todesco. “We had a couple of TVs right by the door and we were on our laptops, but it was just students out there, at least as far as we knew.”

Around 10:30 p.m., the students shut their sliding door and pulled the shade down. Both the front and back door were closed and locked and the four roommates were asleep before midnight.

“At one point during the night I thought I heard some shuffling around or doors opening, but I didn’t think much of it—I just thought it was my roommates,” said Todesco.

The next morning, the students awoke to find that a television and two Apple MacBooks had been stolen from their living room sometime during the night. With each computer worth approximately $1,500 and the TV worth several hundred dollars, the total estimated value of the stolen property is close to $4,000, according to Director of Safety and Security Randy Nichols.

“It wouldn’t surprise me at all if a number of apartment doors were checked and that was the one that was unlocked,” said Nichols. “We’ve run into that before, when suspects will literally walk down the length of an apartment complex checking doors as they go.”

“If there is a crime of opportunity, people will take it,” said Molly Soloff ’15, who lives in a neighboring unit at Harpswell Apartments. “I think it’s a lesson to be more cautious. We live in an incredibly secluded part of campus.”

The students whose apartment was burglarized contacted the Office of Safety and Security and the Brunswick Police Department (BPD) and were able to provide the computers’ serial numbers, which will be added to the FBI’s National Crime Information Center (NCIC) database of stolen properties. 

If the burglars attempt to connect to the Internet using the laptops on College WiFi or if the serial numbers are checked against the NCIC’s records, Security or the police will be notified.

“We have those Find My Mac apps, and we could actually see that one of the computers was turned on at one point somewhere in Portland” said Todesco, referring to a tracking service included with Apple’s iCloud software. “But I don’t know that the police can really do anything with that since it’s not an exact location.”

“That laptop could have already been sold on the street,” said Nichols. “Most laptops stolen here from campus are sold very quickly on the street for whatever [the burglars] can get for them.”

Also on Sunday morning, a masked man displaying a knife unsuccessfully attempted to rob a resident of Union Street. According to Nichols, the BPD believes that this was an isolated incident and that there is no threat to the campus. Both events follow a summer of relatively little crime. 

“I’ve been here nine years now and it was probably the quietest summer we’ve had since I’ve been here, in terms of significant incidents,” said Nichols.