This winter's ghastly northeastern blizzard and subsequent cold snap have turned some of Boston's brightest young minds into common criminals.

Boston University's student newspaper, the creatively named BU Today, reported this week that since this fall there have been 14 clothing-related robberies reported in Terrier territory, and the vast majority of them were of the $1,000 down-stuffed jackets beloved by celebrities at Sundance and college kids alike.

"A Canada Goose jacket is probably twice as valuable as an iPhone," said Peter DiDomenica, a detective with the university's police department, "but many people who own them aren't considering them to be valuable property."

Most of the jackets have been stolen from the school's Fitness and Recreation Center, where some students and members have hung their jackets on common coat racks instead of locking them away in lockers. The racks are in locker rooms, where it's illegal to install surveillance cameras, making it even more difficult for police to track down the pilfered outerwear.

Luckily there's an easy fix for this kind of larceny. "Lock them up instead of hanging them on a coat rack," DiDomenica said. "That's an immediate solution."