It had seemed like just another Sunday night in Stone Dormitory. The parents and siblings had cleared town after Family Weekend, the stench of beer in the stairwell—remnants of another rowdy Saturday night in the 413—had finally begun to fade, and last-minute cramming before Monday morning classes was underway.
But as Matt Rhone ’11 sat in his room at about 2:10 a.m., early Monday morning, flipping through flashcards in preparation for his Tuesday morning psychology test, he heard wrestling with equipment coming from his first-floor common room.
As Rhone turned the corner to the common room, he watched the suite’s door swing shut. He walked up the stairs to the common room and found only one controller (not the two he had left after his last study break) lying on the coffee table. A quick glance at the video game stand indicated that the suite’s Xbox was missing.
Curious as to where the Xbox went, Rhone checked his friends’ suite across the hall to see if they had borrowed the gaming gear. But he noticed his friends’ common room Xbox was gone too. According to Rhone’s roommate Ethan Vidal ’10, that’s when Rhone started to worry.
Like a “modern-day Paul Revere,” described Vidal, Rhone rallied Resident Counselor Bailey Connor ’11, Luke Arnold ’11 and Ernesto Alvarez ’11 (residents of the neighboring suite) and Charlie Andersen ’11, Nick Mancusi ’10, Dan Savage ’10 and Vidal, members of his own suite—all in various states of study or slumber—to mobilize in pursuit of Stone’s surreptitious swindlers.
“Alright, let’s go find this kid,” Rhone recalls telling the troops.
Armed with a hockey stick for extra “precaution,” Rhone and the others dispersed. Amherst College Police Officer Nathan Jackman was coincidentally patrolling the Social Quad at the time of the hunt and, according to the Police Report and sources, was immediately informed of the situation by one of the Stone residents. He called Sergeant Wendy Masiuk to the scene for further support.
But it did not take long for Officer Jackman to spot a student scurrying in front of the adjacent Crossett Dormitory carrying a bag with wires dangling from the side. “Are those yours?” Vidal recalled the officer asking the apparent thief, whose bag held two Xboxes, a Nintendo Wii and several games. Brief questioning convinced Officer Jackman to arrest the male student.
From Rhone’s initial disturbance, to the first arrest that morning, only approximately six minutes elapsed.
Officer Jackman later returned to the Stone suite with the recovered items for Rhone to identify. But the “Pool Party” game rather than the typical “Halo” in the Xbox made it clear that the console had another owner, leading the Police to reason there must have been more accomplices.
After a night of investigation, Amherst College Campus Police named three suspects (two Amherst students and one non-student) in the larceny of six Xboxes, two laptop computers, one DVD player, one Playstation 3, one Wii and an assortment of controllers, games and DVDs valuing upwards of $6,000. The thefts occurred in five different suites in Crossett, Stone and Pond dormitories on the Social Quad.
Although still investigating the case, Campus Police expects to file “criminal complaints against the three men for several counts of breaking and entering in the nighttime with the intent to commit a felony and several counts of larceny” within the State system by the end of the week. None of the Stone residents who saw one of the suspects that night could identify him and Campus Police will not release the suspects’ names until it submits its formal complaint.
“Theft is something the College takes very seriously and there are always serious consequences,” explained Dean of Students Ben Lieber. Once Campus Police presents its charges, Lieber will preside over a proceeding through which two faculty and three student representatives from the College’s Committee on Discipline will evaluate the student suspects’ guilt and, if appropriate, determine the necessary punishment.
While larceny constitutes the most frequent crime on the Amherst campus, Campus Police considers the Oct. 26 case exceptional. Nonetheless, Chief of Police John Carter believes this case was certainly an “anomaly” for these particular students and does not think these students will commit a similar crime “any time soon.”
Nevertheless, “I hope they’re trying to prosecute [the suspects],” Vidal expressed, relating his “shock” and “disappointment” that such a crime could happen at Amherst and, more importantly, that two Amherst students could be among the perpetrators. “What could lead you steal from fellow students?” asked a vexed Vidal.
Rhone, too, called the event “unfortunate,” especially given the “culture of trust” that had existed within his dorm, where students frequently left—and still do leave—the doors to their common rooms and individual rooms unlocked. Residents and friends openly pass through interconnecting suites via common rooms to make their way throughout the dorm and Rhone considers it “impractical” to always lock his common room door.
Nonetheless, Carter stresses the importance of locking doors, calling unlocked doors “an open invitation for people looking to steal things.”
In the meantime, while Campus Police holds their Xbox as evidence, Rhone, Vidal and the other suitemates have turned to an antiquated Nintendo 64 to fill the void left by the Xbox Mancusi called the “hearth” around which suitemates and friends gathered to play, converse and just chill out.
While Rhone acknowledged, “In the grand scheme of things losing an Xbox isn’t the end of the world,” he did admit to suffering some withdrawal. “It’s been two days without Halo and we’re struggling here,” Rhone disclosed with a smile. “It’s getting pretty bad.”