I am surprised the other students are not interested in insurance because theft from students is very high and many lose laptops, tablets, smartphones and so on.
Just search under "theft of student laptops" to see articles about it.
Maybe consider buying a small safe to have in the room, you can get them from Staples for example.
If you cant stop the theft then take steps to reduce the damage caused by the theft.
Make sure all important student work on the laptop is "backed up" to an external hard drive (or in the cloud) and the external hard drive stored separately from the laptop.
Then if the laptop is stolen you wont lose all the important work.
Also on a smartphone install software so that the smartphone can be "wiped" remotely.
So if the smartphone is stolen you run some software and this deletes all the personal data off the phone. It may be the software can also "lock" the phone and make it unusable but I am not sure about that.
Make sure any insurance company you use knows they are a student and share the house with other students.
Also check with the university to see it they work with a particular insurance company.