Many students and alumni are frustrated or angry after hearing of the recent theft of an external hard drive from the Office of Student Affairs that contained unencrypted personal information for nearly 40,000 students and alumni. Though we should all take care to see that we don’t hastily include the entire administration in our disappointment, there is good reason to be angry. The massive security and surveillance failures over the past few years that have led to the thefts of countless laptops (and even desktops!) from campus apartments, townhouses, libraries and offices makes many a Georgetown student all to aware of the dangers of the big city. Still, the terrible security on campus is mostly the fault of the most senior officials. Those personalities with the authority to expand the budget of the Department of Public Safety, to develop better training procedures or to broaden surveillance systems should review their practices. The university’s ability – or lack thereof – to hold its own employees accountable for executing their given tasks needs to be expanded and taken more seriously. The blame should not be placed indiscriminately on the DPS, as would be too easy to do after a failure as massive as the hard drive theft. The officers that walk the beat around the campus generally have to perform a difficult task, especially considering the chronic lack of funding. As recently as two years ago, the DeGioia administration actively resisted any increase in the salaries of public safety officers, demanding instead that officers seeking higher pay be willing to reduce or eliminate health benefits. As a result, our university cannot compete for or retain well-trained security leaders, nor can the department afford to expand or to build a surveillance system that keeps up with the ever-expanding size of our campus. This abysmal failure by President DeGioia served as a prelude to the apparently unstoppable wrath of thefts, assaults and hate crimes on and around the university’s campus, which continue unabated and cause students to live with the constant tension, wariness and concern for their own well-being and for the well-being of their fellow students. A concern the university does not seem to share. As recently as last summer, senior officials at the Department of Public Safety conducted a survey of the security and surveillance capabilities in and around the northern end of campus, specifically the Leavey Center. It was concluded at that time that new surveillance systems were either unnecessary or, more likely, too expensive. The most tragic part of the story of this recent theft is that few students were actually surprised. For several years now, students have lived in perpetual fear of theft, burglary or worse. Robberies have become so common at Georgetown that some university-owned apartments have been robbed more than once! And it seems that the university was unconcerned because, well, that was the students’ problem. The sheer amount of time it takes for the students to find out about threats, the lack of funding for DPS and security resources like cameras, and the lackluster response, or avoidance of response to questions about the incident projects a cold and uncaring impression from the university. This most recent theft was by no means the most elaborate, but may be the issue that finally causes the university to respond, embarrassed to have been a victim of the same crime that it has ignored for so long. This incident was preventable. What’s worse, however, is that students were the last to be told. The university knew of this incident as early as January 3, and it’s unclear why more than three weeks passed before students found out about the theft of their personal information – not from the university, but from the campus newspaper. According to the university, the delay was a result of the university’s effort to verify the contents of the disk. But, according to a senior administration official, the administration announced the details of the theft last weekend during the triannual meeting of the Alumni Board of Governors, the governing body of the Alumni Association and principal fundraising organ. Clearly, the university’s priority was to minimize the effect of the blunder on its efforts to grow its endowment, rather than to inform students of the danger to which they had been exposed. Had the policies and workings of this administration been less ill-conceived, the damage of this theft could have been prevented, or at least mitigated. The fact that social security numbers of students who have long since graduated were kept in an easily-transportable external hard drive with barely a shred of protection is borderline-criminally irresponsible. The poor communication within the administration’s departments is dangerous, and is a failure on the behalf of the people whom we trust with providing for a safe learning environment . Students’ security is constantly compromised, be it on the streets around campus, or on our credit reports. There is no reason to treat sensitive information so lightly, so as to leave 38, 000 SSN records on an unsecured, unencrypted, easily accessible external hard drive separated from a possible thief by just a locked door, which has clearly not served as a deterrent to criminals lately. The failure to communicate effectively puts the responsibility of caring for the students on the shoulders of students, rather than the people directly responsible for it. In no exaggeration of terms, this failure was monumental, and if something, or someone, does not drastically change the focus of this institution to providing for the security of the students, instead of discounting our welfare for the welfare of the fund-raising effort, this university will not be able to claim to be a legitimate educational institution. Fund raising is important, but the only reason to raise funds is to provide a better education. It’s time for the administration to start doing its job well, and it’s time for this university to start acting like the prestigious institution it claims to be.