Fifteen Minutes: Waking Up to Crime in Matthews Hall

When Jacob A. Rubin '03 returned to his room in Matthews Hall around 3:30 a.m. the morning of Sunday, Oct. 3, he left his Yankees cap on his desk in his suite's common room. The next morning, his roommate Geoffrey M. Stevens '03 woke up around 11 a.m. He checked his e-mail and then went to the bathroom. The bathrooms in Matthews don't have any paper towels, just an ineffectual hand-dryer, so Stevens dried his hands with toilet paper. When he threw the wad of toilet paper in the garbage can, he saw it land on a Yankees cap. "I said, Hey, that looks like Jake's hat."

Rubin was awake and using his laptop computer at his desk when Stevens returned to the common room and asked Rubin if his hat was in the bathroom garbage. As Matthew D. Gibson '03, the third roommate, remembers, "Jake was like, 'No, it's right on my desk.'" But when Rubin checked his desk, he saw his hat wasn't where he left it. "We thought it was a prank," Gibson says. Rubin recalls: "I was very perplexed, to say the least, because at that time we hadn't realized anything else was stolen. We thought someone had broken in, taken the cap, and threw it out."

This was in the thick of the baseball playoffs, and preliminary suspects, Rubin jokes, included any Red Sox fans in the vicinity. Gibson says "We thought it was just a little bit creepy that someone had gotten into the room, but it was more like, 'Oh, shit, Jake can never wear his hat again because it's been sitting in the garbage can.'" At this point Rubin realized he probably had neglected to lock the door the night before.

Rubin and Stevens both serve important roles on their hall's intra-mural Ultimate Frisbee team. Stevens is the IM coordinator of his hall, as well as a member of the Frisbee team that Rubin captains, the Matthews Fly-Bys. The team's first game was scheduled for 1 p.m. Rubin went to brunch and had a bagel and some water; he "wanted to keep it light." He went back to the room to change into shorts and a T-shirt, fill up a water bottle and walk over to the field with Stevens. As they were leaving, Stevens went to grab his Harvard I.D. card from his wallet but his wallet was gone. It had been in his desk in the common room. "I looked around the room--I thought maybe I had left it somewhere or misplaced it. But then I thought I'd check that garbage again." Rubin left the suite while Stevens was still looking for his wallet, "worried about my teammate, but looking ahead to the game."

Despite Stevens's complaint that "it's not much fun rummaging through a bathroom garbage pail," he did so admirably. And in the garbage can, he found his wallet with its contents strewn around the barrel along with a pair of shoes from another room. (Earlier that morning, Rubin had noticed the sneakers in the trash, but thought little of it, thinking just that they were somebody's "old kicks.") At the bottom of the barrel, Stevens found Gibson's backpack with his TI-86 calculator and history of the USSR notebook. Stevens' Harvard I.D., his debit card and all his cash--about $20--were taken from his wallet. Why didn't the robber also take Gibson's calculator? Gibson theorizes that the burglar didn't take his calculator, or the three laptops, or Stevens's stereo or television, all in the common room, because the robber "didn't want to hassle with [selling] or anything. He just wanted totally liquid stuff."

Meanwhile, Captain Rubin and the Fly-Bys were having problems of their own. Rubin remembers, "We were under the minimum by one player--Geoffrey Stevens." Despite being a player short, the four Fly-Bys put up a good fight in an unofficial exhibition game, losing a hard fought 4-3 game.

Stevens told his proctor about the theft and then called Harvard University Police Department (HUPD) and his debit card company. Trying to cancel his debit card, Stevens recalls, took forever. It was a Sunday, so banks were closed, and Stevens had to call an automated 1-800 number. "I would listen to all the menu choices, and none of them sounded like the right one, so I'd just pick one, and it would be wrong and I'd have to call again." Stevens ended up calling the company five times.

HUPD sent an officer over to talk with Stevens and Gibson. He took their names down and wrote what was stolen. As Gibson recalls, "it didn't seem like there was much he could do." Stevens, who hails from nearby Braintree is a New England Patriots fan and was anxious to watch their game that afternoon. "I was willing to miss the first hour for the Fly-Bys. I ended up missing it anyway, dealing with the police." The Patriots 19-7 win over Cleveland offered some consolation to Stevens.

The next day it was raining. When Rubin went to get his rain shoes, he saw they were missing. He remembered he had left them by the door to dry. Says Rubin, "We think the robber has a size 11 shoe." For Stevens, "The real pain was having to get the new I.D. card. [The I.D. people told me] I had to have the police report with me, so I had to walk out to HUPD, which is all the way out near the Quad" in the rain. Stevens' troubles continued once he reached the station. "My name was misspelled on the report, and then they fixed that, but the report said it was Matt's wallet and his I.D. card [that had been stolen]. They needed to fix the report but to do that they needed the original police officer who had filed the report. So I had to go back to HUPD twice."

Looking back on the robbery, the roommates have different perspectives. Stevens, the hardest hit of the trio, was the most affected by the robbery: "It's nothing I would expect to have happen, especially here. To have it happen in the first month of school, it jars you." Gibson says he "felt vulnerable for three days afterward" but doesn't any longer. Rubin, a native New Yorker, was the least affected of the three. "It is a little unsettling to think that someone was in our room while we slept, but I still feel safe so long as we take certain precautions."

Rubin, who neglected to take the precaution of locking the door when he came in at night, says, "I felt a little guilty. I usually lock it. Must've forgotten. I'm just relieved not that much was taken, considering what we have in this [room]." Neither Gibson nor Stevens blames Rubin for his forgetfulness, noting that any of them could have left the door open. Gibson adds, "I don't blame Jake because I didn't lose anything." Stevens' father did find it a bit ironic that of the three roommates, it was the one from New York who had left the door open.

Stevens was frustrated by the bureaucracy he had to navigate to get a new I.D. card, but otherwise had no problems with the University's handling of the affair. Gibson says that the biggest fault on the school's part is not having doors that automatically lock, especially in robbery-plagued Matthews Hall. "It would be a relatively minor expense that would save a lot of kids a lot of grief," he says. All three roommates said their proctor had made it clear that there were robberies and that they should lock their doors.

As far as the robber goes, the three roommates are more curious than angry, and are glad to hear that the police have arrested their chief suspect, Andre Stuckey, 20. Still, they wouldn't mind a little payback. As Rubin says, "I hope, by some twist of fate, that the robber who did this has to face the Fly-Bys in an intramural Ultimate competition. We'll take him down."

The Matthew Fly-Bys forfeited their first three games, and have been kicked out of the league.

Geoffrey M. Stevens '03 finally got his new I.D. and has been entering and exiting Harvard buildings with ease.

Jacob Rubin '03 continues to wear his Yankees cap, despite the fact that it spent a night in a bathroom garbage can.

Matthew D. Gibson '03 is just glad none of his stuff was stolen.