In separate incidents, a bicycle and bike parts were stolen from the area beneath the bridge entrance where students frequently chain their bikes.
Students who ride their bikes to school generally lock them there for the day because they are not allowed to bring bikes into the building. Bicycle thefts have also occurred in that area in past years.
Dean Philip Fisher dealt with both bike incidents.
One of the students whose bike was stolen on Wednesday, September 26, had it returned to her. The day after her U-lock was cracked and her bike stolen, she saw the same bike locked up in the same area with a different lock. She informed Fisher and proved it was her bike, and Fisher clipped the lock.
Fisher asked that the name of the student whose bike was stolen be withheld because the bike thief may target her again.
Several days after the first theft, a bike seat and tire were stolen from another student’s bicycle. Fisher said he believes the student’s bike lock prevented the thief from taking the entire bike.
Fisher said the thief or thieves were most likely Stuyvesant students.
“It was more of a sense of entitlement,” he said. “The kids may have been staking it out, saw someone who could be a victim. They target kids.”
Fisher said students have been locking up their bikes further East, in front of the Borough of Manhattan Community College, where there are more people around during the day.
“There is a very, very small percentage of the student body that basically ruins the experience for everybody here, and that’s what makes it a very frustrating job sometimes,” Fisher said.
Below the bridge, there is very little security to protect the bikes. School security agents remain inside the building, and there are no security cameras in the area.
“I can’t stand down there and watch all afternoon. Nor can we have a dean stand out there, or a teacher stand out there all day,” Fisher said. “We can’t put cameras everywhere.”
Principal Stanley Teitel said he does not plan to increase any security and does not plan to take any preventative measures. “The reality is that I don’t really want you to ride your bike. For all the pluses that bike riding has, we really don’t have facilities to deal with that,” he said.
“I can’t encourage you to [bike to school] because otherwise I’m going to have hundreds of bikes to deal with. I have no real jurisdiction outside the building,” he said. “If all of a sudden I put a security camera down there, then all of a sudden everyone is going to think I can protect their bike and I can’t.”
Teitel said he would not consider opening up space inside the school building for bikes.
During the December 2005 transit strike, the administration opened up lobby space and room X, where ID scanners are now stored, for students to store their bikes during the day. Teitel considers the transit strike an exceptional case.
Bikes stored during the transit strike were “identified with great difficulty,” Teitel said.
He also said he believes more students ride to school on a regular basis than did during the transit strike. “You have to understand that we didn’t have anywhere near the number [of bikes] that we would have,” he said.
Despite the amount of recent thefts, junior Deborah Kasner is not too concerned about leaving her bike under the bridge. “I’m not that worried because I always feel like it’s not going to be me,” she said. Still, Kasner said the school should offer a place for students to put the bike in the building.
Math teacher Susan Rubin, who rides her bike to school daily, said, “It’s very sad when something gets stolen. No one is happy.” Rubin stores her bike in the math department room during the day.
Computer science teacher Mike Zamansky, who also rides to school, said of bicycling, “It’s good exercise, which isn’t what Stuy kids get enough of.” Zamansky keeps his bike inside his office.
According to Teitel, the Department of Education does not take responsibility for students who get injured while bike riding. “Our responsibility is for you to take the Metrocard which we give you for free and that’s where we want you,” Teitel said.
Teitel said he has received e-mails from parents in support of making space inside the building for bicycles.
Teitel informed parents in an October 5 e-mail of the bicycle thefts, as well as the attack on a Stuyvesant student outside the school building.
“Why not encourage something healthy for the environment and that costs almost nothing?” said Zamansky. “If you fall on the train tracks, the school isn’t liable and if you ride and get hit by a car, the school isn’t liable either.”