For the beginning of Spirit Week, we’re spotlighting what has quickly become a new student tradition at Longwood: insurance fraud.

At first, we were just looking for stories of laptop destruction.  And we did receive some interesting accounts, such as the student who was jamming out to music on the roof of his apartment and, when he climbed into the window and accidentally kicked the power cord, the laptop slid down the roof.

And then there was the amazing tale of a student who was stuck by a vehicle while crossing the road.  The laptop in her book bag, totalled from the impact, was credited with saving her life.

The majority of the stories, however, were about destroying Dell laptops to receive the warranty cheese.  Kind of illegal, yes, but lisssssten.  Longwood Lancers bleed blue and white — not green.

Katharine, a recent graduate, was kind enough to write about her own experience destroying her laptop, and how it changed her life got her a new computer: 

Dell has got to make a killing with its contract with Longwood. Even if they weren’t turning a huge profit on the laptop sales, I’m sure they’re in cahoots with the hackers that were always itching to get my credit card number from my PC. In fact, the only truly useful feature of the Longwood Dell is what they call the Complete Care Warranty. With a couple of little white lies to my scholarship committee, I convinced them that the warranty package was a university requirement, and so they paid for it. My new laptop, which I named Clarence, was novel at first but quickly became more trouble than it was worth. After three and a half years of less than stellar service, it was time to take ol’ Clarence out behind the barn and put him out of his misery, if you take “behind the barn” to mean “in the radio station” and “put him out of his misery” to mean “forcefully drop him repeatedly against the floor two weeks before the warranty expired.” It was more therapeutic than anything Student Counseling Services had ever done for me. Since I knew a guy who worked at the Help Desk, I planned my “accident” around his work schedule. It’s like the Mafia: if you know the right people, they don’t ask questions. I took home a loaner, and three days later I had a new-to-me refurbished Dell, which lasted for about a year before it was hacked and I had to drill a hole through the hard drive. As for me, I’m a bona-fide Mac person now, apple sticker on the car and all that jazz. Still, I’m grateful to Dell for giving me my first real experience with insurance fraud, a skill I’m sure to need if the Public Option doesn’t go through. Now that’s what I call discovering the power in me.

ALSO:  We’ve got the full lineup for Friday’s Battle of the Bands.