Five Groningen students enrolled at the Minerva Academy of Pop Culture in Leeuwarden have come up with a campaign to raise awareness among their fellow students about how to break the vicious cycle of bike theft.
Translation by Traci White
The campaign, which is in Dutch and English, involves wrapping tags around bikes with security issues, like only having one lock or not locking the bike to a solid object. OOG TV reports that the students hit the streets on Thursday night to tag potentially vulnerable bikes.
Lennart Roelofsen, a spokesperson for ByeCycle, says, “There are far too many bikes being stolen and resold at night for a few euros to drunken students. The bike is usually just abandoned somewhere because repairs would cost more than the bike itself, and that is a system that basically rewards bike thieves.”
Roelofsen says that students are the only ones who can break the cycle by making sure that their bikes are securely parked and by refusing to buy bikes under sketchy circumstances. The campaign also includes an Instagram account with tips (in English) for how to protect your bike.
