By In the wake of a high rate of bicycle thefts on campus, Cal State Long Beach organizations will offer students high quality U-locks for $5 — a program aimed to prevent bike thefts.
According to a CSULB press release, the program, “Lock and Roll,” which begins Saturday, gathered the CSULB Cycling Club, the CSULB Sustainable Transportation Program and University Police Department to receive funding through the Campus Sustainability Task Force to work with Out-Spoke-N Cycles and the ABUS Lock Company to make 100 U-locks available to you after registration your bike.
In order to qualify for the U-locks, students, faculty or staff must first register their bikes with the University Police. After registration, the first 100 participants will be eligible for a $5 ABUS U-Lock and instruction on how to properly secure bikes after showing proof of bike registration to the University Bookstore.
The U.S. Department of Education’s Campus Crimes Statistics Report notes that bike theft is the fastest growing crime at college campuses across the country, according to the release.
Last year, University Police reported 105 bicycle thefts over a span of nine months at CSULB.
“Bike theft on campuses around the country has always been a concern,” CSULB Police Chief Fernando Solorzano said in a release. “I think through this type of educational program and by offering an affordable bike lock to those individuals who need one, well, that’s a very positive step and will go a long way in preventing this crime.”
Students like senior graphic design major Daniel Garvin said that bike thefts have become such a common “culture” on college campuses.
“I’ve had a couple of friends who have gotten their bikes stolen probably within like a month of them buying it,” Garvin said. “Like my one friend, she bought a nice beach cruiser — I think she only had a chain lock for it — and that was literally stolen in like a month of her buying it.”
Once, Garvin said that he saw an attempted bike theft at the Parkside College dorms in which two men were “scoping out” the bikes to see which ones looked appealing. He said he reported the suspicious men to campus authorities.
“You can never really tell when someone is stealing a bike — that’s like the main problem,” he said.
He said a big problem is that a lot of the times, thieves are fumbling around with the bike and it appears like that person is simply trying to unlock their bike, for example.
University Police highly recommends that students use U-locks to secure their bikes, since less than 1 percent of bicycles stolen on campus are secured with those locks.
Bike registration is free to anyone at the University Police Substation at the University Student Union on the second floor.
