The library has a problem, at least that is what Adam Van der Zwan tells us in his article “We need to be watched.” A very grave and serious problem — so serious, in fact, that it’s worthy of trotting out the sort of “we must act now” rhetoric you expect to hear from a politician.

Twenty thefts a week are reported at the Bennett library, yet there’s apparently only one surveillance camera. SFU has to simply kick in all the extra money it has lying around to up the surveillance. After all, video surveillance would instantaneously and overnight reduce the number of thefts to justify the cost of implementation.

What Adam misses is that SFU is providing a remarkable service by declining to direct its ‘unlimited’ budget to subsidize personal carelessness and irresponsibility. It is thereby making students develop the very valuable and marketable skill of actually giving a shit about their belongings.

Does that seem awfully paternalistic? Is being constantly surveyed by the depths of a blinking camera any less so? I mean, really, who ought to care more about your own personal possessions than yourself? Certainly the cameras won’t. Twenty thefts a week, that’s a fraction of the student population begging to externalize the costs of their irresponsibility onto the rest. “Save me from myself,” they seem to cry.

The naïve are slapped on the wrist by being stolen from. Although it’s morally wrong for a thieves to steal students’ iPads, it’s morally better than the costs of their own naïvety becoming externalized to general society. The responsibility they learn from having valuables stolen is becoming of post-secondary graduates.

Is this the same wrongful victim shaming that you (no doubt) read on Salon.com? Perhaps. The difference here is that I’m blaming the criminal, too.

It’s best expressed in the counterfactual: had you been a more astute and careful steward of your resources, you would not have suffered a loss. You violate a sense of moral responsibility by not watching your valuables, so it is good that you directly experience the consequences of such behavior.

Had you been a more careful steward of your resources, you would not have suffered a loss.

The rate of thefts will likely generally stay constant, not because the same folks are being robbed again and again, but because there’s always a new batch of young ‘un’s who cannot take the slightest care of their own possessions, yet fancy themselves the solver of all the world’s problems. Absent-mindedness is often seen as a trait accompanying geniuses; perhaps these kids see this correlation, that allows them to blame their problems on everyone but themselves. Is this the logical result of a degree? Do we become too smart to be responsilbe for our own possessions?

By the time you’ve finished at SFU — with one less laptop — you’ll be that much more able to combine your newly minted critical thinking skills with a modicum of personal responsibility, and an ability to engage in the most menial cost/benefit analyses.

It’s for your own good that the library isn’t stocked full of God-tech. Think of it as SFU’s gift to you.