Colleges are urging investment in theft protection

When it comes to getting renter insurance for dorm rooms, college students tend to leave that protection to their parents, whose homeowner insurance may not provide the necessary coverage.
“I don’t think a lot of students coming into college think about that,” said Tiffany Gaffney, assistant dean of students at Providence College. “There’s so much information coming at them at orientation, they just can’t retain it all. The important thing for us is targeting parents. The more parents who are aware, the more effective the messaging is.”
As college students are busy sizing up roommates, their class schedule and which residence hall they are set to live in, especially in that first year, they are also more than likely hauling a laptop, smartphone and even a tablet to school – pricy electronics that, should they get damaged, may be expensive to replace, college officials involved in overseeing housing on campus say.
A mere 12 percent of Americans ages 18 to 29 said they had renter insurance in an Aug. 11 survey of about 1,000 people done by Princeton Survey Research Associates International for Denver-based BankRate Insurance.
“What this tells us is that fewer millennials have renter insurance compared to the rest of the population as a whole,” said Laura Adams, senior analyst at InsuranceQuotes.com. “About one-third of all renters have renter insurance, [according to] previous studies.”
Renter insurance covers such personal possessions as clothes, furniture, and computers not only in dorm rooms, but in apartments off campus. And some policies also cover liability, Adams said, including falling and getting hurt at a party or getting sued by someone. Consequently, since the potential for liability exposure does exist, not having coverage puts a person at risk, she said.
This low percentage of millennials who do have renter insurance “is very troubling,” Adams said, “because the cost of renter insurance is very low. It’s one of the most affordable types of insurance you can get: $184 a year, on average, nationwide.” Officials at Providence College, the University of Rhode Island, Johnson & Wales University and the Rhode Island School of Design said their schools all encourage students and/or their parents to purchase renter insurance.
RISD partners with College Student Insurance, a policy that protects students from loss or damage, in which students can customize the policy limits and deductible to work with their budgets, said Jaime Marland, RISD’s director of public relations.
“We haven’t seen any particular increased need in the past several years, but we think it’s always a good idea to have property protection,” Marland said.
While there have been no incidents since school started this fall, Nancy Hardendorf, Johnson & Wales University director of parent and family programs, said one of the messages to some 1,900 parents during August orientation is about using renter insurance or a rider on their homeowner policy.
“The ugly reality is, people steal from one another and kids leave their dorm rooms open and can be vulnerable to theft,” said Hardendorf. “Our halls are big.”
Two summers ago, McNulty Hall – a dorm that is home to 500 freshmen – was shut down when there was work done throughout the building on the plumbing, Hardendorf recalled. That created massive floods later in the year when the heat was turned on, she said.
“There was a lot of property that was damaged and those families that had that coverage were the ones that were OK,” she said.
One parent, Cindy Otoski, whose two daughters went to Johnson & Wales for their undergraduate degrees and are now living at home while going to graduate school, said the peace of mind afforded by the rider obtained on their homeowner policy for $18 a month while daughter Jennifer lived on campus for three years was worth the cost. “She had a computer, video games, a refrigerator, a lot of high-tech equipment,” recalled Cindy Otoski. “We had met her roommates, but we wanted everything replaced if there were any issues. It’s not that we didn’t trust Johnson & Wales; we just felt safer knowing the possessions we had purchased were covered.”
Otoski said her concern was that, in school dorms, there are a lot of “friends of friends” coming and going. Jennifer’s computer would easily have cost $2,500 to replace and an iPhone costs about $600 to replace if lost, stolen or broken, she said, adding she never had to file a claim.
The University of Rhode Island goes so far as to write a recommendation into its housing agreement with residents that students or their parents obtain some type of rental-insurance coverage, said John Sears, assistant vice president of student affairs and director of housing and residential life.
“You don’t want to think about the worst that can happen,” Sears said, “but we found it is prudent to make sure you have some form of insurance. Anything can happen. It’s a safe campus, but it’s only as safe as the folks attending [who] take precautions themselves.”
Some 3,200 freshmen a year get this message, and the university is now replacing dorm furniture through attrition with desks that can be padlocked, Sears said.
Gretchen Cathey, a marketing manager with Stillwater, Okla.-based National Student Services Inc., which insures property, said her firm this year is providing group policies to Providence College, Salve Regina University, Bryant University, Roger Williams University and the Community College of Rhode Island.
Just this fall, the company started offering a liability option to clients, since in addition to needing to protect property at home or abroad, students may find themselves stuck after damaging property by, for instance, accidentally starting a fire with a microwave oven that shorts out, Cathey said. •

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