On 1 September, 2020, an anonymous student living in the Incheon Global Campus (IGC) dormitory uploaded a post on Facebook and Everytime, a mobile application for the University community, that packages had been stolen from the IGC post office box. Specifically, the writer of the post said he had already checked the CCTV in the delivery room through the IGC Housing Office and George Mason University Korea officials and would report the suspect to the police unless they turned themselves in. Surprisingly, this is not the first time a robbery like this has occurred in the IGC dormitory.
There have already been several reports on the Facebook IGC community page that packages have been stolen from dorms. From February 2019 to September 2020, more than 20 robbery cases have been posted on the Facebook IGC Community page, accounting for approximately 10 percent of the total posts on the page. Most of the students pointed out shortcomings on the IGC’s post office box systems, saying there are no confirmation procedures to receive the packages and no attendant present to prevent robberies.
However, contrary to the students’ claims, the IGC Housing Office said that workstudy students managed the IGC post office box from 2018. Moreover, the IGC Housing Office also introduced the Smile Box, an unmanned delivery box. In spite of the existence of these systems, there had been additional cases of robbery, and students had concerns of these incidents. After discussing with the IGC Foundation, in response to this, the IGC Housing Office decided to strengthen the existing systems. They have set the fixed operating time of the post office box as 10:00 A.M. - 10:00 P.M. during weekdays and 9:00 A.M. - 3:00 P.M. during weekends. During this operating time, the IGC housing office assigned work-study students to each post office box to carry out ID verification. Although the delivery storage room’s security is somewhat improved with the reinforced system, cases of robbery still occur in the IGC dormitory. Because many people are refraining from going out after social distancing policies became tightened, many students living in the dorms rely on packages sent to their residences for their dayto-day life. Therefore, if they lose their packages or fail to receive them on time, students in the dorms may experience great inconvenience caused by a lack of daily necessities. To prevent the same robbery issues and additional problems, the IGC Housing Office should manage each post office box more thoroughly. When asked to comment on the recent robbery cases, the IGC Housing Office said it is still in discussion to supplement and improve the system again.
Written by Seoyoung Mun | Staff Writer
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