I dont think the student has a reasonable basis for suspicion of a crime by the employees, but as I have said before, if she does based upon her context and knowledge of the circumstances, then she can report it to the police. The police investigate crimes.
@intparent Color me equally stunned, if not flabbergasted.
I would encourage my kid to follow up because it is the right thing to do, not because she thinks she should get the money. (IMHO, if the money weren’t claimed, it should go to an on-campus fund that serves needy students, not to the finder.)
The lack of an email and the admonition not to tell the RA definitely raise suspicion. Best case, owner contacted security and it was returned before they sent an email. (Unlikely, since the email should have gone out quickly.) Worst case, the college is employing a pair of thieves. (I’ve seen too many very clear cases where employees stole items left behind on MetroNorth to think that unlikely. I’ll give you details if you don’t believe me.) Some people are evidently all too ready to either assume that everyone else is rich and won’t miss it, or think that finders keepers is some kind of moral law.
The assumption that this must have been drug money is convenient, because it means that there is no sympathetic victim in the case. There are any number of reasons why a kid would have a lot of cash, many of which are innocent and sympathetic. Maybe they were collecting from a group for an event or a present, and felt compelled to make up the loss from their own, possibly scarce, personal funds, being ashamed or embarrassed to admit that they lost it. Maybe they had received a lot of cash gifts from relatives for a birthday. Who knows.
But no matter whose money it is, and how they got it, it is WRONG if it was stolen. The OP’s D tried to do the right thing. Now she needs to follow up with the head of security and the Dean of Students (or the equivalent) to make sure that others did also. She needs to write a careful, step by step, detailed account of what happened, including who said what, timing, etc, and send it to those in a position to deal with it, including a responsible authority OUTSIDE the security department.
If her motivation were to try to get the money for herself, she should indeed let it go. But I strongly doubt that that is the case. If everyone in a society just shrugs it off when there is injustice and corruption, then they will get more of what they have chosen to tolerate.
Those responsible authorities outside campus security are called the police.
You are correct, @roycroftmom , but I think that outside police would tend to defer to campus security in this kind of matter. The police would probably be looking for evidence to prosecute, if they took it seriously at all. An internal house cleaning–if necessary–may be more likely.
MODERATOR’S NOTE: I don’t think any new advice can be given the OP, so I am closing the thread.