I would not stress about this until you figure out your dorm room set up. My daughter is in a “suite - style” room with rooms for 2 connected to bathroom for the 2 rooms. I believe her door automatically locks (based on the number of times she’s locked herself out) so the only way someone would have access to her room is if her roommates had people over. I don’t think they’d ever do that unsupervised. In addition, to get into her dorm at all you need to swipe in. So, to get into her room you’d need to both swipe in and unlock to door. While thefts happen at her school the ones I’ve heard about have been due to people leaving expensive items in common areas or somehow rigging their doors so they don’t lock when they leave. She actually jokes about how long things will sit in the common areas and no one touches them. She left a fairly expensive jacket in her chem lab right before Christmas break. When she went back 6 weeks later it was still there. But, maybe she just goes to school with generally nice people.
I think locking and unlocking items you use frequently would be a huge pain. And I don’t think you’re going to have space for a large locker or trunk in many rooms. But I guess you’ll have to wait until you see your dorm set up. I’d highly recommend not bringing crazy expensive items though unless you absolutely need them.
Another option is a device called “tile” (tile pro, tile mate, etc). You can get them on Amazon. It’s a very small device that you can put on or in an item you are worried about losing/being stolen. Then you can track the device on your phone if you want to know where it is. You can make an alarm go off, etc. It’s sort of like find-my-iphone.
My daughter has lost MANY coats since she’s been in school. We bought her these to put in a couple of jacket pockets since we got tired of replacing them. Now if she leaves them somewhere she can track them.