Dear Mr. Thief people,

Do you need an HP monitor from 2002? Are those of great significance to you? You can buy them at the surplus sale if they really are. And if so, then we need to guard them like gold or a Minnesotan’s private opinion. Many of you may familiar with the CME auditorium.. If you do, you also know that everything that isn’t nailed to the floor is, in fact, chained to the floor.

My question is, has anyone really tried to steal a doc cam without the projector? Was it worth the time to put a chain on it? There’s already a padlock on the projector, though 15 unsupervised minutes, a screwdriver, wire clippers and a large duffel would render it useless. Yes, I’ve put some thought into this, but that’s not the point. The point is, I assume there are locks on these things because someone was drunk or dumb enough to steal them.

For example, the stapler in the civil engineering computer lab last year. Sir or madam who stole it, did it have significance to you? Did you grow up in a staple-less household? Did you watch all the other kids staple thick stacks of paper and have the time of their lives, but without realizing your struggle? Did you ever think,

“That could be me if Dad could get that monkey off his back and get a job. One that pays better than a zookeeper.”

I hope so because it’d leave a bitter taste in my mouth, more than the seven emails about you stealing it and the replacement stapler needing to be chained down. Goddamn staplers are getting chained down these days. Though to be fair, it would still probably taste like a stapler.

So to the kleptomaniacs on campus, hear me now: chains on our possessions are chains on ourselves as a society. They are constant reminders of how little faith we are allowed to have in one another. How we have gotten to the point where our doors and windows must be locked. Your private information safe and children on alert. Your staplers chained. Let us make a pact: we remove the chains and you prove us wrong. Things stay where we left them, and we can finally feel safe leaving them. A simple change could be an olive branch of trust from everyone in our community to one another. The chains are chaining us down. And making it so hard for me to get a new monitor on the cheap.

Sincerely,

Grant