LC Meridian

Issue date: 5/5/08 Section: News

Items left in lockers past their rental term allows the Apex management to treat patrons' belongings like trash. [Click to enlarge]

The Apex building at Lehman is a sports and fitness facility available not only to Lehman students and administrators, but also to Bronx area residents and community groups. With many students and members of the community using the facilities, the question of security is always a concern.

Although Lehman's Public Safety Office is located in the northeast corner of the Apex, and the building uses cameras and motion detectors as part of its security program, it is encouraged that members not store valuable items in the rental lockers as Lehman accepts no responsibility for lost or stolen property. Once the rental terms have expired, locks are cut and all items are taken from the locker and placed in the equipment room, known as "the cage." After 15 days, the belongings are then discarded.

It is this last procedure that concerns Danny Velez, a senior at Lehman. Velez, an employee at the Apex, whose own book bag was stolen from the facility, voices a concern with how the equipment is handled once it is removed from the locker.

"They place the contents of the lockers… into garbage bags with the locker number written on a piece of duct tape. These bags are just thrown into a back room in the Apex with no regard to people's belongings, and some of the bags were even missing locker numbers," Velez said.

Enda Condron, a member at the Apex, had the misfortune of having his belongings taken into "the cage." After searching for his things in a pile of bags, he found his garbage bag ripped open with most of his belongings gone. For Condron, however, the problem does not lie within the system which is in place, but with the way it's carried out.

"What bothers me most about this was the fact that no one bothered to contact me," Condron said. "In my application, they requested all my numbers and they could have called me first to warn me that my time was up."

Ron Carter, Associate Director at the Apex, addressed some of these concerns.

Continued...

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