People baffle me, part n of x

Got an e-mail today from the campus police.

We now must lock up all the classrooms as soon as we are done teaching in them (unless there's another faculty member waiting at the door to go in and teach.)

Why? Two overhead projectors have been stolen from classrooms in the past week.

I'm sorry but WHAT? What possible use could a criminal have for one of those things? What possible street value do they have? They're big, and they're clunky, and as far as I know they don't contain any parts or chemicals that could be used in the manufacturing of controlled substances or weapons. I don't think pawn shops will take them.

But people will steal them anyway.

I don't like to think it's people stealing them to use in their classroom at a school, but I suppose that's possible.

So, once again, the erosion of the freedoms of law-abiding people continues apace. (And yes, I do think it's kind of an irritant to have to lock every damn classroom every time I'm done using it. Some of the classrooms have faulty locks and it takes five minutes of jiggery-pokery to get them to lock with my key. Perhaps I should tell the campus police about that...)

Because some idiot wanted a couple of free projectors.

The thing that irritates me is this - I have students doing independent research. I often let them into a lab to work on their own. If the way the e-mail was phrased was meant to be applied strictly to the letter, either I am not permitted to let them use the labs any more or I must be in there babysitting them every moment that they use them. And nuts to that. I'm getting really sick of all of us being treated like criminals because of that 1% or less of the human race who can't play by the rules.

(Of course, a SIMPLER solution would be to chain the things to the walls - like at my old school - but that's got it's own problems. Not the least of which is that it's kind of demoralizing to teach in a room where everything looks like the pens at the bank.)(