If we're gonna talk about numbers, let's talk about how many junk blitzes I've received in the last 24 hours: 48. No, I won't be attending your poetry reading/film screening/Scrabble practice, even if there is free pie. Perhaps the most useless of them all, the "lost jacket" blitz seem to be the one thing we can't escape as Dartmouth students. Unfortunately, I haven't found your North Face jacket that had your phone, ID card, credit card, car keys, friend's car keys, passport, social security card, birth certificate and other-things-that-should-have-remained-home-in-a-safe. But even when I haven't lost or found anything, I still find myself skimming through those Lost and Found bulletins. Reading about other people's losses gives me some perverted sense of schadenfreude.
Lost items become a subtle pulse of campus. They hint at what happened last night, where people are hanging out, what people are wearing, what their priorities are (did you really have to tell the whole campus that you had a tampon in your pocket?) and, sometimes, their naive faith in mankind (LOST: generic jacket in a high-traffic place during a high-traffic time, no reward, will Parkhurst you for theft).
Most importantly, lost jacket blitzes create a quiet, frustrated tension within the community. Each proclaimed loss of expensive material goods nicks away at a sense of community trust on campus. We ask, accusingly, that the perpetrator "kindly" return the goods to the Collis info desk, no questions asked. We say, tongue-in-cheek, that we understand things happen, it's winter and it's cold and things get mixed up. But while the occasional generic jacket owner gets his coat back, thereby restoring his faith in humanity, the majority of losers are left with unanswered pleas and inboxes filled with lost jacket blitzes from other losers.
While we're quick to point fingers, let's ask ourselves a question: Why can I leave my laptop in the 1902 Room for hours at a time without it getting stolen while mysterious North Face thieves lurk among us?
Let's start with a riddle: It's Friday night on frat row. There are a 100 North Face jackets in a coat room. A drunken girl stumbles in and takes a random coat, which may or may not be hers. For the rest of the night, the other 99 coat owners will come into the room one by one to retrieve their coats. The lucky ones who still have their coat in the room will rightfully take their own coat home. If their coat isn't there, they become frustrated and take a random coat that isn't theirs to battle the cold. Finally, the 100th person (some hard guy who is the last one to leave) will walk in and find only one coat remaining. What is the probability that the 100th person will find his/her coat left in the coat room?
Answer: 1/2
Informal proof: If she takes her own coat, the 100th person will find his or her own coat, ceteris paribus. If she takes the coat of the 100th person, the 100th person will not find his/her own coat. Otherwise, let's say the drunken girl steals the jacket of the nth person, where n is an integer between 1 and 100. That means that after the girl leaves with nth's coat, person 2 through person n-1 will all leave with their respective coats. Then, when person n walks into the room, they will find a coat room with the coats of person 1, and the coats of person n+1 through 100. Person n's coat is not there, and that person will thus take a random coat from the remaining coats. If person n takes coat 1, the 100th person will find their coat. If person n takes coat 100, person 100 will not find their coat.
If person n takes any other coat, let's say m, the problem will continue with persons n+1 through m-1 taking their respective coats. Person m will either take coat 1 or coats m+1 through 100. If person m takes a coat that is not coat 1 or 100, the problem will continue until coats 1 or 100 are taken or until it is up to the 99th person. The 99th person can either take coat 1 or 100 an average of 50 percent. Irrespective of the initial number of coats, the last person has a 50 percent probability of finding their coat in the room. However, we must remember that a greater number of jackets inevitably leads to a greater number of mix-ups.
While I admit that I barely attended my Econ 1 class, let's take a walk through Microeconomics 101 and examine the marginal costs and marginal benefits of jacket theft:
Marginal Benefits: Warmth, will alleviate pressure to conform to the Dartmouth uniform, economic reward of jacket retail cost minus wear.
Marginal Costs: Risk of getting caught at the scene of the crime and post-crime if it's not a generic jacket. If it's a nice jacket, you can't wear it outside because of the increased risk of getting caught, which means that you have to wait until you get home to wear the coat. This seems like a hassle to me, especially since it is colder in Hanover than in most students' hometowns. This means that if no one returns your non-generic jacket, someone is either a) waiting to take that jacket home b) too lazy or inhibited to return it to the owner.
Comparing the marginal costs and benefits, it's obvious that the rewards of jacket theft are much greater than the immediate cost. You can call this "Low-Risk High-Yield Decision Economics." Or not. I totally just made that up. Add this temptation to genuinely accidental mix-ups, and its no wonder that no one ends up with the right jacket.
So basically, this is redeeming the mysterious, malicious campus coat thief who earns a secret living and pays tuition by reselling North Face jackets (people actually do make livings reselling stolen bikes on Craigslist). The pervasiveness of jacket thefts and mix-ups indicate that the coat bandit is actually dispersed throughout campus and is, in fact, the kid who sits next to you in your 10A.
