Research labs on the third floor of Klamath Hall, home to much of the University’s chemistry department, have seen two break-ins during the last two terms, but the Department of Public Safety and professors who work in the building are not sure why.
“Nothing was actually stolen,” said Assistant Department Head Julie Haack, but it appeared that someone had tampered with some experimental arrangements in the labs overnight. Faculty members called DPS first thing in the morning – around 7:30 and 8:45 a.m., on April 24 and February 12, respectively – presumably right after they opened the lab at the beginning of the day.
“The two incidents were late at night, but we don’t know when,” said Tom Dyke, a chemistry professor. “We just know people came in in the morning and saw it.”
Dyke said faculty members found that the chemical arrangements inside experimental chambers called glove boxes had been rearranged.
“It is conceivable that some very foolish person may have been attempting to take equipment from the inside of the glove box,” Dyke said.
Tampering with the experimental arrangements is extremely dangerous, Dyke said. Mixing the wrong chemicals could have led to “a fire or an explosion or some other series of events” that may have disrupted the “inner atmosphere” of the boxes and seriously injured the vandal. Damage to the equipment also could have disrupted experiments, affected other parts of the lab or permanently damaged the glove box, which could have cost the department thousands of dollars.
However, “that’s true even walking around the chemistry lab,” Dyke said. Anyone in the lab who doesn’t know how to use the equipment or doesn’t “understand the environment” is at risk, which is why the lab is locked every day after hours.
It is unknown how or why vandals broke into the lab and tampered with the glove boxes. Dyke said there are a number of reasons why someone might have tried, and one of the “obvious things that come to mind” could be related to illicit drugs.
“It’s true that there is equipment in our laboratories that can be used for any kind of synthetic chemical work, and so it’s conceivable that somebody who was doing something they shouldn’t have been with chemistry would have wanted to get equipment,” Dyke said. “Somebody doing illicit drugs” might have tried to take some of the balances inside because making drugs like methamphetamine requires a tool that gives specific weight measurements.
Regardless of whether the break-ins were related to drugs, Dyke said the incidents are an alarming trend.
“This is really serious stuff,” he said. “Somebody was doing something in a chemistry lab that they shouldn’t have been doing.”
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