Multimedia Reporting (Kuhr-Musser)

The Kansas Union was unusually packed this week as students enjoyed a familiar beginning-of-the-semester tradition: the poster sale.

As most students delight in buying posters to adorn their dorm rooms and apartments, others have begun to realize that they can easily save their time and money by stealing, with virtually no chance of repercussions.

“The posters are overpriced as it is and in my opinion they can afford some lost posters,” Kyle Headrick, Dodge City sophomore, said. Headrick stole three posters from the sale this year in order to decorate his apartment’s living room. His theft, save for the use of a friend as a lookout, was alarmingly easy and uncomplicated.

“I picked some posters that I liked, rolled them up, and walked out with them,” Headrick said. He said that rolling up the poster was enough to make it look like it had already been purchased. One of the posters, in a coincidence that Headrick called “karmic”, was later torn down and stolen from him at a party.

The sale, which concludes Friday, is operated by Beyond the Wall, a national chain of poster stores. The company seasonally hires representatives to make a tour of college campuses every semester. The sponsoring group, in this case Student Union Activities, then gets a percentage of the profits.

“We sort of assume that there’s some stealing going on,” Adam Parks, a Beyond the Wall employee working at this semester’s sale, said. He said that other than the two cashiers working at any given time, there is no security in place to prevent theft.

“We try to keep an eye out, but we haven’t really seen anything,” Parks said. He noted that the poster sale is always extremely profitable, especially in the fall when new students move in. He said that this semester’s sale has, through four days, outperformed the projected figures from previous sales.

While the cashiers do their best to prevent theft, the fact that they are often occupied with customers combines with the open atmosphere of the Union to create an ideal situation for poster thieves.

“The main reason that I did it is because it’s so open and there’s no security,” Headrick said. He added that he has never stolen from a store and the only thing that made this different was the increased chance of getting away cleanly.

“I wasn’t worried about being caught at all,” Headrick said.

Headrick is not the only student to have this idea, and with Beyond the Wall and SUA remaining satisfied with the performance of the poster sale on the KU campus, the opportunity for theft remains.

“I would definitely do it again,” Headrick said. “I’m a poor college student being taken advantage of by expensive posters. I feel like Robin Hood.”