Miranda Whist

Miranda Whist

A stranger turned around and looked at me, wide-eyed and a little bit accusingly. “Where’s my stuff?” she half-asked, half-whined. We were in the gym locker room, and she’d opened her locker to find it empty.

A series of locker robberies sweeping the McGill gym locker room have left gym-goers feeling vulnerable. Another victim of theft, Hattie Pearson, a McGill exchange student, came back from a fitness class to find her lock cut open and her wallet and USB stick gone. She immediately contacted the front desk, where she met a girl who had her laptop stolen. She then filled out a report and one of the building’s supervisors helped her look for her missing things, unsurprisingly to no avail. She was told that 20 other lockers had been broken into that day.

Pearson received a call half an hour later telling her that her wallet had been found in another locker that had been broken into. All of the money was gone except for some pennies.

“It’s just not a nice feeling at all,” Pearson said, adding that she felt violated and that she had suffered an invasion of privacy. “It makes you feel vulnerable.”

The source of many students’ frustration is that they are doing nothing wrong: they have locked their lockers, and have trusted that that is enough. Many, like Pearson, are coming straight from campus to one of McGill’s workout classes. Unfortunately, it appears that most thefts have occurred around these peak times, deterring many from coming to the gym at all.

“It just leaves me fat and pissed off,” Pearson said.

The facility’s staff is limited in their ability to protect against theft in private areas like changing rooms. Nevertheless, staff members are taking steps to reduce the thefts, said Assistant Manager of Events Eyal Baruch, while working in collaboration with McGill Security to educate the student body.

“This started years ago, ever since the gym opened. It’s not a secret … once you are in the building, the locker rooms are an obvious target,” Baruch said, adding that posters have been put up outlining what has always been the facility’s advice: lock your stuff up, and don’t bring any valuables to the gym. Baruch and the rest of the facility’s staff recommend using the small lockers provided by the gym that can be rented at a cheap price and can be publicly monitored, rather than using those in the changing rooms.

Despite these efforts, McGill students continue to fall victim to what appear to be well-planned and well-executed heists.

“We think it’s a team of two,” said Baruch, adding, “It’s a well-thought-out process.”