Moria Dailey
Published: October 12, 2005
Students who have lost belongings on any PJC campus need only to go to the PJC police department to claim them.
However, if students don’t do so soon, their belongings will be auctioned off to benefit student scholarships.
The police have to keep items for 30 days, and after that, Florida law states that all items must be sold at a public auction, with proceeds going to student scholarships, said Sgt. Peggy Anderson, of the PJC Police Department.
Anderson says the police have collected numerous items, ranging from text books to calculators to even bicycles.
“[We’ve found] basically anything anyone would bring to school,” she said.
The auction, which Anderson said will take place in the near future, will happen in the Student Center on the Pensacola campus of PJC. All students and faculty will be notified of the auction beforehand, and are welcome to bid on anything.
“Things generally go for pretty cheap,” Anderson said.
To claim items before the 30-day limit, students will need to have proper identification, as well as be able to thoroughly identify their belongings to retrieve them.
Student Terry Griffin said he’d have no idea where to go to claim his property if he lost anything.
“I think students need to be better informed [about where to claim belongings], but I think it [the auction] is a good idea,” Griffin said.
“If someone comes in looking for a Texas Instruments calculator, without any sort of identifying marks on it, we may have 50 of them. We’re not going to be able to tell which calculator is theirs, so we’re just not going to give them one,” Anderson said, adding, “They can buy one at the auction, if they want.”
She urges students to mark their belongings in “any way”, so if they are lost, they will be able to be identified.
“It’s easier to return a Woodham class ring with your name on it, than a brand new algebra book without any markings in it,” Anderson said.
Students who mark their names on their belongings are notified, either by telephone or in a letter, by the police department if anything bearing their name is turned in.
Students who have lost items on Warrington or Milton campus will be held for 30 days at said campus police departments, but after 30 days, they will be transferred to the Pensacola campus department to be logged into the auction database.
On the Pensacola campus, the police department is located in Bldg. 5, on the Warrington campus in Bldg. 3300, and on Milton campus in Bldg. 4100. The police departments on all campuses, except the downtown center, are open from 7 a.m. until 11 p.m. Monday through Friday.
Students who wish to claim their belongings will have up until the day of the auction to do so.