Despite the use of locks and campus bike racks, students report cases of bike theft, many of which occurred in the South Campus loggia in November 2023. Although no culprit has been found, theories swirl about the parties responsible, including one where a group from Chicago comes to take many bikes at once and another where local high schoolers take the bikes while driving through campus.
Tatum Watkins `27 remembers riding her bike around campus the night before it was stolen, which she reports was Saturday, Nov. 4. She said that she usually parked it outside the window of her room in the basement of Cleveland Hall. However, after being out of town for the weekend, she said she returned to campus to find that her helmet, which she always left on her bike, was sitting on the ground in front of Cleveland.
Watkins said that when she spoke to her roommate, she reported that the loggia had been loud around 4:30 a.m. “And she commented that it was … really weird, we almost had someone, like, tapping on our window,” Watkins said. When she went to check on her bike it was gone, and she said her cord lock was lying cut on the ground.
Quinn Wright `27 and Wesley Carne `27 report similar experiences. Wright said that he had emailed Residence Life to ask about bike security before arriving on campus and was told that his bike would be safe if stored in the loggia. Yet, Wright and Carne had their bikes stolen in the South Campus loggia, both stating that they were stolen in November. Like Watkins, Wright and Carne found their bike locks cut near where the bikes were stored. All three individuals said that their bikes were fairly expensive.
All three quickly reported the theft to campus safety and spoke to the Grinnell police. Watkins said that in addition to reporting the incident, she posted on an Iowa stolen bikes Facebook group.
Additionally, she said she connected her police report number to her registration on bikeindex.org, a website that allows users to register their bikes, giving bike shops and pawn shops that information. That way, if a police report is attached to a specific bike, it is automatically flagged when the store enters it into its system. Watkins also said that she sometimes checks Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace for any sign of her missing bike.
Watkins said that she researched bike theft and found that most often, stolen bikes sit in a warehouse for a year and then are resold or immediately sold to a pawnshop before the police report is finalized.
Watkins, Wright and Carne do not believe that they will get their bikes back. “It’s gone one way or another. You know, I can hope that sometime when I’m … driving through Grinnell, walking through Grinnell, [it] might just be sitting there, but that’s probably not the case,” Watkins said. Wright said that he is attempting to get an insurance payment.
“Upon it being stolen and like going to file the report, I was informed that the people from Chicago that come up and take them are not uncommon,” Wright said, referring to rumors about a group from Chicago that drives through different campuses and steals many bikes at a time to resell.
Watkins said she had heard similar rumors from upperclassmen, and she was told local high schoolers come through and take bikes occasionally.
James Shropshire, director of campus safety services, wrote in an email to The S&B that the most recent complaint of bike theft was on Jan. 22, 2024. He wrote that previously, there were two reports of bike theft in December 2023 and six reports in November 2023.
“The amount of bike thefts is aligned with past numbers during the fall semester when it begins to get colder. In many cases, the owner has not recently checked on their bicycle, and it is missing when they check,” Shropshire wrote. He did not mention any popular student theories about who is stealing the bikes.
To keep bikes safe, Shropshire wrote, “I would recommend that students register their bicycle with the Department of Campus Safety and also to take advantage of available national bike registries online. We recommend that people always lock their bicycle with a quality lock set and check on their bicycle on a regular basis to ensure that it is still where the student last placed it.”
He also wrote that although recovery of bikes is rare, it does happen, so he recommends students report stolen property to local law enforcement.
Wright is trying to come up with a new solution. He said that he is trying to start a student initiative to get more secure bike storage options on campus, such as bike lockers with an individual key, but that costs are prohibitive. He said that 1 company quoted him $4,000 for the first locker, which stores 2 bikes, and $3,000 for each additional locker.
Both Watkins and Carne said they would bring new, although possibly less costly, bikes back to campus and lock them with better locks. However, Wright said that he would not bring a bike back to campus unless a better storage solution is put in place.
