A University of Canberra student's car has been badly damaged in a spate of vandalism at the institution.
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Melissa Martin returned to her car on Sunday morning to find it had been flipped onto its roof. "You see it at first [and] you are like no, that's not real. It was quite traumatising,'' Ms Martin said.
"It needs a new windscreen; it needs a new passenger window. The passenger doors have been buckled inwards; the roof has a humungous dent in it; we need a new bonnet. It's caused a fair bit of damage. I'm not too sure if we can really fix it.''
The damage to Ms Martin's car was not an isolated incident on campus, she said. Many of her friends had been victims of vandalism.
Sam Lynch said he woke one Sunday last month to find his car chocked up on rocks and that all four wheels had been stolen. The cost of the wheels and the damage to the undercarriage had cost him $1600.
When he went to the university and the police they told him there was nothing they could do, he said.
"I was making a list of [acts of vandalism] and I'd got about 10 things in a couple of months,'' he said. "It's a huge issue. Everyone is sort of pissed off.''
Mature-age student and resident at UC Campus in College House, Ace Carne, had his BMW very badly vandalised on campus. He said the damage was costing more than $50,000 to put right. His car is still being repaired in Melbourne after it was vandalised last November.
A campus resident for two years, Matthew Duncan, said the first time his car was broken into it was ransacked.
This happened directly under a security camera but, as many other students have mentioned, the security cameras are of such poor quality that no identifiable images of the perpetrators can be captured and used to press charges. He said the second time his car was broken into it was filled with dirt and cost him a "hefty fee'' to get cleaned.
A University of Canberra spokesman said it was reviewing security on campus.
An ACT Policing spokeswoman confirmed that a patrol car and forensic staff had gone to investigate the damage to Ms Martin's car but there was no CCTV footage of the area, nor any witnesses.
