Thief strikes Porter Hall

Approximately $18,900 worth of band instruments were stolen from Porter Hall on the weekend of Feb. 10-12.

Four of the five instruments, including a fox bassoon, a buffet soprano clarinet, a buffet bass clarinet and a yamaha euphonium, belonged to GC&SU students.

“Somebody knows something,” said Ken Vance, director of Public Safety. “We are following every lead we get, talking to people. Everybody has been very cooperative.”

Music chair and associate professor Richard Mercer said that insurance should help ease some of the financial burden on both the students and GC&SU.

“We are looking into that trying to find out exactly what kind of insurance the department has,” Mercer said. “At least one of the students had a personal insurance policy. Her $10,000 bassoon will be replaced by the insurance policy. The music department has an insurance policy and once we have met the deductible, which is $1,500, then we should be able to cover the school instrument and we are working on whether or not it will replace the students’ instruments.”

The theft was reported to Public Safety on Monday morning when a student noticed that lockers had been forcibly entered.

Erin Sewell, a music therapy major, received the news from her friend Carrie Bettinger.

“When (she) called me Monday morning, I couldn’t believe it had happened,” Sewell said. “I got off the phone with her and started crying as I was getting dressed to get up to the school. I stopped crying for a little bit and started praying that it was not my locker, but when I got up to the school and went upstairs to check my locker, I started crying even more.”

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Public Safety is in the process of reviewing security videos from around Porter Hall, Vance said. Another camera on the wall of Bell Hall has a clear view of Porter, but is out of commission due to construction. No security footage was available from inside the building, but that could change soon.

“We have been investigating options for securing the building and also getting video cameras to help with security,” Mercer said.

Vance said that Detective Robert Butler has already begun the case.

“These kinds of things are hard,” Vance said. “I don’t want to give people false hope nor false despair. We are working on it.”

Despite the sudden loss of instruments, the music department still must prepare for its upcoming spring concert.

“It definitely negatively affects the band rehearsals,” Mercer said. “We are just three weeks away from a big concert and those instruments are needed for the performance. So now we are scrabbling to find lesser quality instruments for the rehearsals.”

Vance said this is not the first time that an instrument has gone missing before an important musical event. Last semester a saxophone was stolen from Porter Hall before a Christmas concert.

“The strange thing about it is that these things have been happening right before events and you have to take that into consideration,” Vance said.

Sophomore psychology major Kirsten Malta’s euphonium was stolen in the theft.

“I was and still am very upset about this, but the police are doing all they can in the case,” Malta said. “No one expected a theft of this magnitude, but I do hope that the police find who is responsible. ”

Vance said that any information pertaining to the case should immediately be reported to Public Safety at 445-4400.

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Feb 17 2006. Filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry