The Loss of Lost Property and the Return of the Bermuda Triangle

ALICE KENNEDY

Vol 11, Issue 8

A week or so ago I made the error of misplacing my Commercial Law in Practice textbook. As a consequence I learned two things. Firstly, that the security desk has been removed from the ground floor and secondly, that lost property has been replaced by a hole in the space-time continuum. Both these facts have staggering implications for students at MLS, so please, read on.

The natural reaction to realising that I had lost my textbook was to bat that realisation aside and assume that someone else had stolen it. As I trudged downstairs towards Ground Floor to make a report to security, my stomach sank. The desk was gone. It had mysteriously disappeared, like a Commercial Law in Practice textbook that had been there one second, and gone the next.

I realised that there was:

• No way to quickly lodge reports of a theft.
• No way to lodge a lost property report and be contacted if that property were found.
• No way to efficiently let someone know if a flasher began streaking around the law school.

Tapping my foot with disapproval, I eventually figured out how to call security and make a report. Not having them on speed dial, I had to look up their number. I pondered whether a potential mugger would wait politely or even wander away while I took the time to call security. Probably. I only have an iPhone 4s.

As I hung up, I desperately tried to unravel this conundrum. Who would do this? Who would remove a centralised security service from a part of the university that was not connected to the main campus? Who would deny law students the convenience and safety of security staff? And, more importantly, who would now tell me off for sneaking a durry slightly too close to the law school entrance?

Using my Evidence and Proof-based deductive reasoning, I formulated a case theory. They tell you to stick to an explanation that is plausible, coherent and supported by evidence. There was only one logical explanation, offered to me by one of the librarians. The security desk and lost property had been swallowed, and replaced, by the Bermuda Triangle.

The Bermuda Triangle is ordinarily located in the North Atlantic Ocean, but is sometimes displaced. Consistent with its reputation for the strange and paranormal, it is attracted to highly concentrated levels of absurdity. Despite its attraction to Donald Trump’s hair and his politics, Melbourne University’s Law School has become fertile ground for the Triangle. Online commenting on De Minimis, extended JD Facebook debates, policies surrounding lecture recordings, clerkship stress, statements about graduate employability and the removal of the security desk are likely contributing factors.

The specific power of the Bermuda Triangle is to cause the disappearance of objects under mysterious circumstances linked to warps in the space time continuum. Clearly, this was consistent with the loss of my Commercial Law in Practice textbook and the security desk.

The librarian (known as Tarek)  informed me that the straw that broke the camel’s back was not the theft of several Ethics textbooks, though the Triangle feeds on irony as well.

“The sheer paradoxicality of multiple law students exhibiting the very dishonesty the subject is designed to educate against should have been enough to shatter the space-time continuum completely.”

However, I was told that the precise moment of the warp had been narrowed down to the relocation of lost property.

Lost property, formerly located at the security desk, has been separated into levels two, three and six. Property is collected at these places (at some point) and then (somehow) transported to Union House where it is (somehow) separated from the rest of the university’s lost property and (somehow) students realise they have to walk across the campus to find it. Apparently, this is necessary because there is nowhere to store the lost property – which is because there is no longer a security desk in the law school.

In the wake of this logical loop coming full circle, the Bermuda Triangle has descended to fill the rational void. Students should now be aware that the Triangle’s warp in the space-time continuum will cause items to disappear and appear at random. Sometimes they will appear in Union House, sometimes in the LSS Office, sometimes in the library or level six. And sometimes they will be exactly where you left them. It will be up to students to trudge to all four locations to lodge four separate reports in order to solve the mystery of their missing belongings.


As for that Commercial Law in Practice textbook? It was located 20 metres away from where I was seated in the Law Students’ Study Area, which was where I had been studying the day before. Mysterious indeed.

​
​Alice Kennedy is a third-year JD student


More articles like this

• BIP SLIP: HOW MELBOURNE UNIVERSITY EXPOSED ITS TRUE NATURE
• 'BIP Mania' Uni Poised to Close Student Centre, Sack Well-Being and Disabilities Co-ordinator to Implement BIP Plan

More from this author:

• The Urban Jungle: Ticket Inspectors
• Judicial Sass
• The Perks and Quirks of Law School Spaces
• On the Other Side of the Keyboard: The Problem of Anonymous Commenting 

The rest of this issue

• Does MLS Have a Drug Problem?
• Party Politics Hindering Marriage Progress
• I Want my Underpants on the Outside
• ​Trophy Hunting and Colonial Game

Cartoon by Beixi Sun, a third-year JD student