Window broken in Baxter basement over Fall Break

Baxter residence hall. Photo by Anushka Srivastav

Baxter Hall has had another break-in. A window in the basement was broken sometime during Fall Break and was discovered by a Baxter resident at around 6:00 p.m. on Sunday, Nov. 26. 

Mychal Bishop (‘27) discovered the broken window when moving his bike into storage after break. The first thing he noticed was the cold: “It feels, even for a building that doesn’t have a functional [heater] right now, cold here,” he recalled thinking. When he explored the basement to find the source of the temperature change, he discovered a window that had been broken and had its latch turned. Bishop called Campus Safety, and an officer quickly arrived and boarded up the window. Bishop said the glass was replaced “like, the next day.”

Though he didn’t know of anything being taken or damaged in the break-in, Bishop said incidents like this are why he stores his bike in his room over breaks. Bishop’s bike was one of several stolen at the beginning of this school year. 

Bishop said the break-ins haven’t made him feel unsafe living in Baxter. “But as a place to store items of value unsupervised? I’m slightly more hesitant.” He noted that anyone who has access to the basement has access to the whole building.

In an email, Director of Campus Safety Andrew Fresh said there were conflicting theories about whether the window was broken from the inside or the outside, and that regardless of the cause, the window was fixed.

Baxter is a relatively frequent target for on-campus break-ins. A break-in through a student’s dorm window on Jan. 6, 2023 resulted in thefts of the student’s personal items, a bike from Baxter storage and items from the Outdoor Program closet in Montag. That closet has been robbed three times since 2021.