On Sept. 30, after Ilana LeVine ’27 spent an entire day in urgent care, there was one thing she wanted to do: eat her Trader Joe’s soup dumplings.
She had put them in the communal fridge, labeling the bag with “Please don’t touch,” However, when she looked for them two days later, they were gone.
“The person took most of my dumplings and then put the empty box back in the labeled bag. When I went to go eat my dumplings, I just found an empty box,” said LeVine, a Tower Court West second-floor resident. “It was really sad.”
LeVine was not the first to experience food theft in Tower Court. Since the beginning of the school year, food has been stolen from communal fridges across multiple floors of Tower.
In an email on Oct. 4, Tower House President Julia Xie ’25 listed a number of items that have been stolen.
“So far, I have lost an entire box of mochi ice cream. A resident on TCE 3 lost 21 pieces of cheesecake. A resident on TCW 3 lost a salad bowl of cookie dough and three bags of cheese. A resident on TCW 2 lost a birthday cake that they bought all the way from NYC to celebrate their friend’s birthday. Another resident lost 20 popsicles. This list continues,” the email said.
Bella Fazio ’28 was another resident who had a tub of cookie dough — a gift from her parents — stolen.
“I put them in the freezer for two weeks, and when I went to check on them, an entire tub was gone, enough to make a full 32 cookies, all just gone,” Fazio said.
Tower Court residential life staff have been taking steps to address the issue. Xie has addressed the issue in emails to Tower Court residents on Sept. 27, Oct. 4, and again on Oct. 18.
“DO NOT STEAL OTHER PEOPLE’S FOOD!!! Food theft from the communal fridges has been a problem for the past three weeks. Please do not do this. Food owners would be sad REALLY sad,” Xie wrote in the Oct. 18 email.
Tower Court East first floor Residential Assistant Madeleine Chang ’27 also wrote an email to her residents, speaking about the consequences of food stealing.
“Res staff wants every Tower resident to be aware that the perpetrators will face consequences such as fridges closed off, Rhonna Bollig, honor code charges and more,” Chang wrote in the Oct. 2 email.
The College considers theft as a violation of the Code of Student Conduct. Theft is defined as attempted or actual robbery of property of the College, property of another member of the College community, or other personal or public property, on or off campus.
Still, the Tower Court esidential life staff urges perpetrators to come forward, especially if they need support.
In Xie’s Oct. 4 email, she writes that if someone needs food or if they “can’t stop taking food from common fridges,” they should contact her because it will not result in anything “bad. ” She emphasizes that she is there to help if anyone is struggling.
Victims also encourage the perpetrator to seek out resources if they need them, instead stealing others’ food.
“If someone feels like they really need food, or maybe they don’t know why they’re stealing it, but they just feel like they have to, there are so many resources out there that they can access. I’m sure they wouldn’t get in trouble for it, because it’s something that’s understandable,” LeVine said.
Contact the editors responsible for this story: Sazma Sarwar, Lyanne Wang
