Thieves broke into the student-run newspaper at Santa Barbara High early Friday, making off with a color printer, a scanner, an $800 camera and more than half of the lab’s computers.
The crime that was committed against The Forge newspaper means the writers, photographers and graphic artists lost most of the work they had done for the paper’s Valentine’s edition.
“I was made speechless this morning, and as I told the students, I’m not made speechless very often,” said Ruth Bartz, faculty adviser of the biweekly paper. “It’s just such a lack of respect for the students who worked on it.”
A watch commander from the Santa Barbara Police Department did not return a call, but Bartz said police did not have a suspect by late Friday afternoon.
She said it appears the perpetrator — perhaps a “skinny person or a kid” — entered through a faulty window above the doorway to the room, which is located on the school’s Canon Perdido wing.
“It has not closed properly for years,” Bartz said of the window. “I have screamed and yelled about it — dust comes in and settles on the computers — but nothing ever got done.”
Evidence also indicates the burglary happened around 5 a.m. That’s because the thieves took the computer containing The Forge’s main e-mail account. That computer was connected to a server located at the County Education Office. The server indicates that the computer had received e-mails as late as 5:30 a.m., Bartz said.
Give Some Journalists a Break
Noozhawk readers, if you can help replace The Forge’s stolen equipment, please e-mail publisher Bill Macfadyen. Noozhawk is proud to support The Forge and its student journalists.
All told, the stolen property is worth between $10,000 and $12,000, Bartz said. Four of the five stolen computers were new iMacs.
Bartz said she believes Forge readers won’t miss out on anything when the next edition comes out Feb. 8 — as scheduled.
“We don’t postpone papers,” she said.
Still, the amount of lost work is substantial. One designer lost 12 hours on a Valentine’s graphic. A photographer, in addition to losing his camera, lost all the photos he had taken of the Santa Barbara International Film Festival.
“We had planned to go to four pages of full color and have a 12-page issue,” Bartz said. “The first page is gone, the fourth page is gone, two feature pages are gone, the back page is gone, and the editorial page is gone.”
She credited the resilience of the students, many of whom plan to spend the weekend rewriting their articles.
“Of course, we were all bummed at first, but they did not get discouraged and pout and say, ‘I’m quitting,’” she said. “They stepped up and said, ‘Let’s go on.’”
Bartz said she was also pleased with the response of new principal Mark Capritto, who told her he would try to swiftly replace the computers.
“As newspapers and communications, we can’t do our job without equipment,” she said.
