Wexler and Carrasco were checking their mail and saw the keys in the Campus Police suggestion box located in the mailroom.
"The keys were sitting in the suggestion box. I thought the keys couldn't possibly be [the missing set], but we decided to bring them to Campus Police anyway," said Wexler.
Police verified that the keys Wexler and Carrasco found were the keys which had been stolen from a Campus Police cruiser left running and unlocked outside of Mayo-Smith House. An officer was responding to a fire alarm in the building.
According to an email from Chief of Campus Police John Carter, all of the keys are present. Carter said that the College does not believe the keys have been duplicated, as it is prohibited by law to duplicate master keys. As a precaution, Campus Police contacted all of the locksmiths in a large radius with the capacity to duplicate the keys. "None of them reported any attempts to reduplicate," said President Tom Gerety.
"There is a belief that it was a prank, but we can't guarantee it," said Dean of Students Ben Lieber.
"We are assuming that it was a prank, and not a terribly malicious prank," said Gerety.
For this reason, Campus Police no longer consider it necessary to undergo the expensive process of re-keying the entire campus, according to Carter's email. "We believe that the risk to the College has been mitigated by the prompt return of the keys and the high probability that they were not duplicated," stated the email.
According to Gerety, the administration had estimated a locksmith would have had to re-key approximately 7,000 locks at a cost of as much as $30 per lock for a total cost up to $210,000.
Gerety said that all officers have a set of keys they wear attached to their belts, but the officer answering the call had an extra set in the ignition. "We can't be so relaxed about our procedures and practices with the master keys," he said.
In an email sent Thursday afternoon, Carter urged the key thief or thieves to return the master keys before 3 p.m. on Monday. In his statement, Carter promised full amnesty and anonymity if the keys were returned by the Monday deadline.
Students did not seem to express much concern over safety while the keys were missing.
"It never really crossed my mind that it would be anyone but a drunk kid," said Elise Kessler '04.