It sucks to do the right thing only to have others do the wrong thing. I agree they sound like dishonest security guards. I’m glad she is returning to her home school. Hopefully she can just put all this behind her.
I agree with @intparent - I’m also stunned that people think it’s out of line for the student to follow up on it.
My D goes to my alma mater and given that I’m a stakeholder there - as volunteer and donor - I have a vested interest in seeing that it’s well-run. Campus cops taking found money would definitely be something that the higher-ups at the college should be notified about.
I’ve served on boards of non-profit organizations and you darn well better bet that I took my responsibilities to the organization seriously; learning about improper/illegal behavior by ANY employees would absolutely be something that the organizational leadership would need to know about out be willing to address.
I don’t see why a student shouldn’t follow up should the issue still bother him or her.
What if the employees are truly corrupt and they’re stealing things from students’ rooms or sexually harassing students (happened at my older daughter’s college)? Should nobody report?
@GnocchiB I don’t think it is out of line. I think it is risky if she did not document anything.
@rosered55 There was no harm to this student but hopefully a lesson learned in documenting. No one knows what happened. Do police usually report back to students?
the point was that no email was sent out announcing that money had been found (as they said they were going to do). So the student doubts that they made any effort to find the person who lost the money.
@donnaleighg While that is true. What if these security guards are experienced and really corrupt with this and have an insurance policy ready if she complains.
If the student truly believes the money was stolen by the guards, then the proper reporting channel is to the local police, not to the possibly corrupt campus security department. That would be a crime. After all, who is to say the money wasn’t split by the whole department? Or by the employees and their boss? How would following up with campus security fix that? She can file a police report if she is so motivated. Let professionals sort it out.
@roycroftmom She certainly should then if she thinks there is a crime. She will be likely be asked for a receipt or asked why she waited so long to report so be prepared to answer the questions. It could have been identified as drug money and there could be a procedure that was followed for retrieved drug money.
If it is my kid, I would tell her to report it as “just a follow up,” and let the authority to take care of it. If those security guards are dishonest I would want them to be off the campus.
@oldfort Really she should have done that before she left.
It could be that drugs were detected on the money and there is an investigation that is quietly happening which they do not discuss with the student body. Was the money put in an evidence bag? They also could be corrupt.
A thief is a thief no matter what their position is at the school. When my oldest was in junior high (junior high and high school paid cash for their lunch), she noticed that the same lunch lady would always short change her. My dd discussed it with her friends at lunch and they too started to noticed that they were being short changed. A dime here and a quarter there all added up to how much she was stealing. Parental complaints and a view of the video tape and the lunch lady was gone. The next year they did away with cash and just swiped their ID. No more stealing that way. It wouldn’t hurt for her to email the head of security and the dean of students and just ask if the money was returned to it’s rightful owner. There is no proof that it was drug money. It very well could have belonged to someone who hadn’t had a chance to get to the bank or a foreign student who hadn’t opened a bank account yet.
Campus cultures differ from one another. Back in my day in college, I witnessed this: a dollar bill pinned to a bulletin board at the entrance to the chow line in the school cafeteria. Alongside the dollar was a little sign: “Did you lose this?”
That dollar and that sign stayed on the bulletin board for several days! I don’t think it was a test or experiment. It was just amazing, and spoke the culture of trust on that campus. That $1 then would be equivalent to about $8 in today’s dollars.
A lot of assumptions here. What does it matter when she reports it? Why would you expect her to follow up on it right away? It would be reasonable to wait some time for the security to do their thing, that’s why they say if the money is not claimed in X months then it is given to the person who found it.
Why do we immediately assume it is drug money? A lot of international students carry and use cash because that’s what they are accustom to, and many international students are very wealthy.
No matter what happened to the money, the security office owe OP’s a daughter an explanation.
@oldfort It certainly could be anything. The running assumption HERE is that these campus security guys are crooks. And they might be OR they might not be. She can certainly try to report it months later to officials in a state she no longer lives in at a school she no longer attends. Send the email. It would have been easier to report in person though. They don’t owe her an explanation but if she wants to report a suspected crime she certainly can.
I would’ve put a sign up in the dorm advising anyone who lost money to see the R.A. The R.A. can take names and approximate amount lost. If a match turns up, great. If not, the finder gets to keep the money. I’m not at all surprised that the security guards handled it the way they did.
There wouldn’t be drugs on the money after it was “laundered” …
for another perspective, I am surprised that the student didn’t hear from the other kids that someone had lost a lot of money. If I had, I would be asking everyone on the hall if they had seen it or knew what had happened or even just to commiserate-the silence by the student who used the machine is rather odd. And I’ve learned that practices vary widely-a 9th grade girl’s backpack went missing at my kid’s school earlier this year. She had 800 dollars in cash and gift cards in it. The parents weren’t really upset, nor was the girl, but I did wonder why on earth parents felt it was appropriate for a 14 year old to carry that amount of cash. But not my kid, not my money. FWIW,in our case the school didn’t send an email out or make an announcement to the students or anything like that. The kid asked if anyone had seen it and they kept checking lost and found. that’s it.
But then you may have participated in money laundering by picking them up from the washing machine.
She made the moral choice. That is all that matters.
If you suspect something wrong is going on, you don’t look the other way. If the security employees kept the money, they damn well should be fired. Campus security is supposed to protect people from crooks, not be the crooks themselves.