A new Campus Safety Services initiative aimed to curb student bike thefts on campus via an online registration program has registered more than 300 users since the start of school through incentives such as free locks.
This new initiative provides all registered student bikers with a free U-lock, an identification sticker and a Temple CSS sticker for riders to place on their bikes.
CSS hopes the initiative will deter crime through the use of the U-lock and the presence of a Temple Police sticker, Acting Executive Director of Campus Safety Services Charlie Leone said.
It will also utilize the identification numbers and registration information to return recovered stolen bikes to their original owners and to provide insurance information when and if bikes are stolen.
While 305 students have registered their bikes thus far, some bikers said that any initiative is powerless to stop bike thefts.
“I’m just doing it because they’re giving out free locks. I don’t really think it’s going to help with all of the bikes here. There’s just hundreds of hundreds of bikes at Temple,” junior kinesiology major Jihyun Lee said.
Junior French and Spanish major Jennifer Dietrich, a biker who has not registered with the program, said unless the stickers are equipped with a GPS chip to locate stolen bikes, the good that they can do is severely limited.
“Once [the bike] is stolen, it’s stolen. I guess it’s a nice thought, but I don’t know,” she said.
Regardless of student comment, Leone continues to stand behind the program.
“I am confident that it will help in the reduction of bike thefts,” he said.
There were three bike thefts reported last week, according to campus crime logs.
Cindy Stansbury can be reached at cindy.stansbury@temple.edu.
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