Freshman arrival: the first day of Orientation, and one of the busiest days of the year for the Tufts bookstore. Hordes of new students eagerly line up with their parents. Clutching armfuls of shiny new binders and fleecy Tufts sweatshirts, they readily hand over their credit cards and accept the mountainous charges accrued with their purchases.
One freshman, though, decided to bypass this common procedure and opt for a quicker and cheaper route: the five-finger discount. Snatching a key chain off the hook, Rob* pocketed his new prize and quickly left the store. Although the key chain cost only a few dollars, it would be the first in a series of shoplifting crimes that Rob would commit throughout the rest of the semester.
Although affectionately called a "klepto" by a few of his close friends, Rob is not a kleptomaniac - that is, his shoplifting is not a compulsion.
"I steal things about an average of once a month here," Rob said. "It's not like it gets to be a few weeks and I decide I need to take something; it's only if I need something real fast and I don't have the money on me."
By contrast, kleptomaniacs are defined as people addicted to stealing and do it to get an adrenaline rush more than to keep the stolen merchandise. This is a severe condition described by medical professionals as only afflicting five percent of identified shoplifters.
Rob's shoplifting habits have been exercised at such campus locations as Hodgdon Good-to-Go and Jumbo Express, as well as the singular incident at the bookstore.
"Almost everything I take has been consumed, because it's mostly food," Rob said. "Basically, whatever they leave out to me, like muffins, granola bars or gum."
Possibly Rob and other college students who shoplift carried their habits over from high school, where stealing is sometimes a popular trend: more than one quarter of all people caught shoplifting are between the ages of 13 and 18.
Since he started shoplifting over the summer, Rob has on occasion stolen more than a piece of food. "The biggest thing I've ever stolen were some rings from a store near my house," said Rob. "They were for the girlfriend of my friend. We were at the store, she wanted them, the lady behind the counter was being rude, so I took them for her. They cost about $80 all together. I felt like Robin Hood."
In another instance of intended generosity, Rob managed to steal an entire bouquet of flowers, complete with glass vase, from Dewick-MacPhie dining hall, when he realized that he and his friends had forgotten to purchase flowers for the evening of a mutual friend's drama performance.
In such instances as these, where he feels he has been mistreated offended is attempting to help others, Rob feels justified in stealing and denies any thoughts of remorse. In general, though, Rob is not proud of his shoplifting. "I do have a guilty conscience," he said.
Rob maintains that he rarely enters a store intending to shoplift. "I know I shouldn't be doing it," he said. "It's a thing you don't think about. If I thought about stealing beforehand, I wouldn't do it."
Such morals prevent him from stealing from other individuals. "One thing I will not do is steal from another person," said Rob. "Not a friend, or a stranger,or anyone."
Despite his ease in differentiating between stealing from individuals and businesses or corporations, the issue of morality may be harder to define than Rob implies. According to research organization Hayes International, the U.S. retail industry loses an estimated $9-10 billion a year due to 290-340 million incidents of shoplifting. This causes retailers to significantly increase the cost of merchandise to the general public, affecting equally those who shoplift and those who don't.
Rob admits that there is one place from which he has no qualms about stealing. "I really have a passion for stealing from hippies," said Rob. "There is a hippie store near my house, and I don't mind stealing their hackey sacks and smoking devices, because if they have problems, then it is just one less hippie store in the world."
*Name has been changed due to the sensitive nature of the subject.
