Penn is not alone in the campaign to stop unattended thefts.
"That is my number one crime" said Jose Rosado, the director for public safety at Columbia University. From January to March 2008, there were 71 reports of larceny there, 55 of which were unattended.
At Penn from January to March of this year, there was a 155-percent increase in thefts from buildings compared to last year.
According to Penn's Division of Public Safety, there were 97 thefts reported in the Penn patrol zone through the end of March, with about 65 percent attributed to unattended or improperly secured items.
Like Penn, which lists Van Pelt Library as the building on campus with the most thefts at 17 this academic year, Rosado said that the buildings with the largest number of thefts at Columbia are the library and the gym.
Steven Catalano, director of public safety for Harvard University, however, said that while a "decent amount" of thefts occur at an Au Bon Pain on Harvard's campus, incidents of theft were "not concentrated in any one area."
DPS began an unattended-theft awareness campaign in January. The initiative primarily consists of posters and notices in buildings around campus advising students and staff to not leave belongs unattended.
Columbia, however, is putting a more active plan in place.
Rosado said that, as of now, Columbia focuses on "more education than anything else," placing posters and flyers around student-frequented places, in addition to police patrol and close monitoring of patterns of past crimes.
Soon, said Rosado, Columbia security officials will "take and confiscate" all unattended property and report it at lost and found. Students will be left a note directing them to either the office in the library or the Public Safety building in order to retrieve their belongings.
In contrast, Harvard has seen a decrease in crime in recent years, Catalono said.
According to Catalano, crime at Harvard has declined from 856 incidents in 2000 to 710 in 2007. About 95 percent of crime is property crime, he said.
At Penn, total crime increased by 10 percent from 2006 to 2007.
After New York City started the "See Something, Say Something" education campaign encouraging vigilance to prevent terrorism, Harvard adopted a similar stance, publicizing examples of times when students called or reported incident that led to an arrest.
"There will always be a certain amount of theft," said Catalano. "It is hard to change people's behavior."
