Gasp!

So one of our oldest and somewhat revered deans has been charged by the police with petty theft of University funds. Now theft is something I just never really understood. Sure, I have used the fax machine to send a personal fax, take the occasional personal call on my University phone, and have taken an envelope to mail something not work related, but I would never steal money. Furthermore, as someone who was responsible for millions of dollars at one time, I understood that there were checks in place to catch this sort of thing. Only a complete idiot would steal from the University and think s/he would get away with it. You leave a paper trail. Every dollar has to be accounted for - where it goes and who authorized it. Then to use one's university-sponsored personal account to "hide" the money was really dumb. What I don't understand is why her business office and the University let her get away with this practice for so long. It is not like she needed the money. Since it was the same amount of money each year, I bet this is one of those stupid things where she thought she could use the funds for purchases that were loosely program related at least in her mind. Perhaps she bought shirts for everyone in the program or something that wasn't kosher within State law. I can see her doing something reasonably stupid like that. But the amounts of money wouldn't cover her car note - she drives a Mercedes. Now her 30 years of service to the University are down the drain and instead of celebrating her retirement, the University will try to forget she even existed.