It seemed too perfect. Marshall Mortiz saw that the Marshall Street sign on the corner of Marshall Street and Comstock Avenue was down. And he wanted it. To him, it seemed almost criminal not to take the sign.
So he and his friend, complete with tools and a duffel bag, dragged the sign behind some bushes and started trying to pry it free.
The duffel bag was too small, the tools didn't work. But Moritz,a junior in the Martin J. Whitman School of Management, was determined to take it. And that's exactly what he did.
Marshall Street hasn't been the only victim. Madison Avenue is a popular one. Harrison Avenue, too. But the jackpot of street sign loot is Euclid Avenue.
Sixty-two signs around campus have been recovered since the beginning of the semester, including eight signs and one cone that were returned during last week's street sign amnesty period hosted by the Office of Off-Campus and Commuter Affairs, said Darya Rotblat, director of the office.
"I was in college, too. I understand the thrill, but I don't think students understand the consequences," Rotblat said.
The Office of Off-Campus and Commuter Affairs, in conjunction with the Department of Public Safety, the Syracuse Police Department and the Department of Public Works, created the "Avoid a fine, return a sign" campaign, a week-long amnesty period held Nov. 9 until Nov.13 when students could return stolen street signs with no fines and no questions asked.
Normally, if caught with a street sign, a student could receive a ticket for criminal possession of stolen property in the fifth degree (a class A misdemeanor), referral to the Office of Judicial Affairs and a charge for the labor involved in replacing the sign.
But the university does not impose fines because SU's Judicial System is grounded in being educational rather than punitive, said Patrick McPeak, interim director of the Office of Judicial Affairs.
Syracuse's Department of Public Works replaces stolen signs in a process that costs approximately $250 for each sign, Rotblat said.
Students would be issued these fines if a Syracuse police officer caught them with a sign, said Sgt. Tom Connellan of SPD. He said officers have seen signs through windows in student apartments.
Students who still have signs can return them to the Office of Off-Campus and Commuter Affairs with no fine, Rotblat said, even now that the amnesty period is over.
This initiative stemmed from a meeting with Rotblat and other members of SPD and DPS because, without street signs, it was harder for police, fire fighters and emergency medical vehicles to navigate the area. "It put the campus at risk," Rotblat said.
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Lying on the floor of 754 Ostrom Ave., headquarters of the Office of Off-Campus and Commuter Affairs, is a pile of stripped street signs - bent and cracked after being pulled off of their poles.
The University Avenue street sign stretches three feet across the hardwood floor. A bright red stop sign is perched against the wall. Eight signs in total have made the pilgrimage back to the office. It doesn't matter how they got there.
"'No parking' signs are popular because students can take down the sign, then park there," Rotblat said. "But we don't ask. We just want them back and to put them back up."
Harry Lewis, the current treasurer and former seven-year president of the South East University Neighborhood Association, said at one point, every intersection near Euclid Avenue was missing a street sign - up to 18 streets at a time.
"I went around the area and wrote down all the missing street signs," Lewis said. "It has been a perennial problem in this area. Basically every sign lost is a cost to the taxpayers of the city of Syracuse. And if we can get the signs back, we don't have to remake them."
Lewis submitted the list of 18 streets that had no signs to the city and Corey Driscoll, community relations associate for the Office of Government and Community Relations at SU. On Oct. 4, he sent in another list of intersections around campus that didn't have any signs to Jeff Wright, commissioner of the Department of Public Works. Most of those signs are now replaced, Lewis said.
Lewis listed Clarendon Avenue, Ostrom Avenue, Maryland Avenue, Livingston Avenue, Lancaster Avenue, Euclid Avenue, Stratford Avenue and Marshall Street as the areas that have the least amount of signs.
Lewis said he has been told of student apartments where walls are covered from floor to ceiling with street signs. It's addictive, he said. When you take one, you are bound to take another.
But that's not the case for Alexis Simons. She said it's more due to boredom than addiction.
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Growing up in Fayetteville, N.Y., Alexis Simons, a sophomore fashion design major, had a lot of free time on her hands. It's in the middle of nowhere, she said, so there's not much to do.
So Simons and her friends would spend summer nights taking street signs. It was an exhilarating feeling for her, a way to break up the monotony of the rural suburb. Bored on a Tuesday night? Take a street sign.
It became a competition between her and her friends: Is the sign a back road or a busy street? Is there some kind of innuendo in the name? Who can get the most?
"You are doing something illegal," she said. "It's fun and only a little risky. It's different than hijacking a car. You can get in trouble but it's not going to get you in jail so no one really minds."
It became a souvenir - a memento for those summer nights. Now used as decorations, each sign has a story behind it.
This story, Rotblat said, is one of the main reasons that street signs are repeatedly taken.
"There's a thrill of stealing something," she said. "Once you steal one, you want to steal another. It's like a memento. If you live on Ackerman, you are going to want to take the Ackerman sign."
sdmusat@syr.edu
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