If you regularly check your email, you may have heard my story before. In the fall of my sophomore year, I arrived at school at 7:15 a.m. and decided to charge my calculator in the designated charging port in the high school library. I knew that the port was infamous for thievery, but my name was written on the back of my calculator, and I trusted my peers. Plus, the building felt empty, and there were no other calculators charging. What were the chances that mine would be stolen? My question was soon answered when, 30 minutes later, I went to check on my calculator, and it was gone. Soon after the theft, I sent an all-school email pleading for my calculator back, but the email was soon lost in the mass of similar notes in the student body’s inboxes.
Though increasingly common, students meet calculator theft at GDS with widespread indifference—indifference that contributes to a culture of distrust in the community.
At the beginning of students’ freshman year, GDS provides each high school student with a TI-84 calculator. Students are expected to use these calculators for the next four years. For some students, the four years are cut short the moment their calculator is left unattended in the library.
High school librarian Rhona Campbell has been working at the high school for eight years and noticed the rise in calculator theft after the pandemic. The calculator charging port used to be located in the math office. To increase accessibility for students, the math department decided to move the ports to the library. It wasn’t until final exams in 2021—when the chargers were moved to the library—that Campbell’s attention turned to the spot.
“A whole bunch of kids had put their calculators in the mass charger, and it came time for the test,” Campbell said. “There were three kids who came back to get their calculators, and their calculators had been taken by someone else. We were running around trying to figure out ways to help these kids get a calculator that they could use on their exams. So at that point, we knew we had a problem.”
Junior Isabella Yip noticed the same issue this year and chose to write about it for an assignment in her English 11 class. Two of her calculators had been stolen from the port, and Yip was fed up with the GDS community’s apparent disregard for the issue. To collect data for the assignment, Yip sent out a survey to a pool of random high school students. Twenty-six percent of the students who answered her survey said they had had their calculator stolen, and 78 percent said they avoided the ports altogether.
“While it’s seemingly a really funny occurrence and a common joke, it’s actually pretty detrimental to our community because we’re supposed to be able to trust each other,” Yip said.
Theft of calculators is so normalized at GDS that, last year, the library staff changed the sign next to the port from “Don’t take someone else’s calculator” to “Leave your calculator here at your own risk.”
The normalization of calculator theft speaks volumes about the culture at GDS. By failing to take any clear steps towards a solution, like introducing clear punishments, the administration is allowing an environment of distrust to form among the student body.
Along with the negative effects on student culture, calculator theft also creates a financial burden for students—the cost of a TI-84 calculator is upwards of 100 dollars. “I didn’t want to buy another 150-dollar calculator,” Yip said, “ and it was just really frustrating to have to go through that multiple times.”
Junior Joey Hilzenrath’s calculator was also stolen earlier this school year. Hilzenrath put their calculator in the library to charge quickly before their physics test. “I leave that there for like maybe half an hour, thinking, ‘Oh, it’s half an hour, it’ll be fine.’ And then it’s gone. So I send out an email, and I’m trying to be as nice as possible because people don’t respond well to being accused of things,” Hilzenrath said.
A few days later, a student returned the calculator to Hilzenrath’s desk while they had their back turned in class. But the experience was still irritating for Hilzenrath, as it is for so many others. “I don’t think this person’s a bad person,” Hilzenrath said. “But if I didn’t get it back, I would definitely hold a grudge against whoever it was.”
One possible solution to calculator theft is increasing the accessibility of individual chargers for students as an alternative to the unreliable spot. “I have been trying—I have been very vocal about this—to get the Hop Shop to sell chargers,” Campbell said. “Those chargers don’t cost that much. They’re, I don’t know, four, six bucks.”
I like this option as part of the solution. However, the student body also needs to change how seriously we approach this issue. In students’ all-school emails about calculator theft, I often notice phrases like “It’s okay if you had a test or quiz, just please give it back,” or “I will buy you something from the Hop Shop or vending machines if you return it to me.” In fact, I added these terms to my all-school email, hoping that my kind words would incentivize the thief to return my calculator—they did not. While these phrases may seem like the polite way to address your peers, understanding tones downplay the gravity of the situation and take the responsibility off the thieves’ shoulders, making the issue seem even less serious.
GDS prides itself on being a place where you can leave your backpack lying in the Forum or computer charging at the tech desk without worry. Calculator theft puts that culture at risk. I leave you with one final plea: If you are guilty of stealing a calculator, return it to the correct owner or the charging port. It is your responsibility to care for your own calculator. If you lose a calculator, deal with the repercussions yourself and buy a new one.