My son's Bridgestone MB-2 survived 4 1/2 years at Purdue University. Before he went, I replaced all the quick releases with bolts and nuts. He told me a popular sport was taking seats from bikes that had a quick release seat post, and tossing them up in the tree branches. The first two years the bike was locked in a bike rack outside his dorm with 100 other bikes. After he moved off campus, he kept it on the porch of his house. The bike wasn't in horrible shape, and I didn't do anything to make it look worse. It did have fenders, so maybe that made it nerdy enough to leave alone. After he graduated, he no longer wanted the bike, so I brought it home and returned all the original parts.

My daughter went to the same school and I started her off with a folding bike, with the notion that she would keep it in her room. As it turned out, the bike was too heavy for her to lug up and down the stairs of the dorm, so it stayed outside in the bike rack. She did not have to walk as far as my son, so it took her as long to ride the bike and lock it up as it did to just walk straight to her class.