Pilfering Epidemic

by Shari Dinkins

When we find supplies or equipment missing on campus, our immediate thought is: students. The response is so basic, so quick that we may not access the rational part of our brains. Odd true story: at one state university, students stole the balls from the mice in the computer lab. Yes, clever young adults actually took the time to flip the mouse upside down, unscrewed the plate, removed the heavy rubber ball and replaced the plate. Newer optical mice should foil the thieves–but it’s amazing that something so strange, and useless, is a target for theft. “If it’s not nailed down,” my dean once said, “they’ll take it.” I nodded. It never occurred to me that he might have meant anyone other than students.

The truth? Instructors do their share. And part-timers are the hardest to nail down. Floating from campus to campus, we can be found rummaging in supply closets at several campuses. Standing at a copy machine, originals are fed in and hundreds of clean, white copies spill out into the tray.

A colleague of mine works at three campuses simultaneously. She tells me it is impossible for her to time it so she can make copies at the correct campus, the correct department, and the correct copy machine for the correct class. What she does is what many adjuncts do: borrow from Peter to pay Paul. On Wednesdays she can be found at the copy machine at the bottom of Batmale Hall at City College of San Francisco, making copies for her Thursday class at the College of San Mateo. On Thursday, she will sneak into the copy room at the College of San Mateo and run some copies for City College so that she’ll have them ready for Friday morning. For those of us running from assignment to assignment, from campus to campus we cannot always have our materials ready days in advance. The unattended copy room can save us. And yes, it is wrong. That’s bad.

What’s worse? Getting caught. One evening, I lay an English quiz on the glass. The copy machine was in the Art department of the same campus. My special code, then 32 copies, and start. I sat down at a rickety wooden table and shifted some papers around. A noise, and before I could stand, another instructor was staring at my copies rolling out into the tray. “Uh, you gonna be a while?” he said. I blushed, “No, ah, sorry, I just…” and the room was silent, except for the roll of the copy machine. I found that even switching departments was a bad idea. Not to mention campus-switching.

But it’s not always borrowing to fill the gap. One part-time instructor I know fills his carry-on with a hundred file folders every time he visits the Evening Instruction Office. I have seen another adjunct grab three boxes of medium blue pens at a community college in San Mateo County. At one campus, the secretary no longer stocks the supply cabinet. A sign hangs above the copy machine, “I can no longer give out supplies; please see the Duplicating Center for your needs.” In Duplicating, I find that after I fill out the small form, they will only give me two (yes, two) pens, one legal pad, one stack of index cards, one grading book, a handful of rubber bands. Should I ask for colored paper, they will ask me how many sheets I need. These guys are catching on, I think. I smile, knowing that it does not matter to me. I do not have a closet full of supplies at home. But for my hoarding friends, it will be a strain. I wonder if they will pilfer somewhere else. Possibly the four-year private university where I teach. They have an open cabinet of supplies next to the mailroom. A veritable oasis. I shudder.

Is it poverty? Or the desperate feeling that there is not enough? In my 20s, I once took a stapler and boxes of staples from a supply cabinet where I worked as a secretary. Sure, I was underpaid; I felt unappreciated. Years later, I was stapling, blam, blam, blam, and I realized that I had stolen that stapler. Every time I stapled, it was as if the universe was taunting me: stole it, stole it, stole it. Finally I gathered up the stapler, the eight boxes of staples, the tape dispenser (with the nonprofit’s name on it) and the nine extra rolls of tape and stuffed them into a bag. To the Goodwill© they went. And to soothe my newly found conscience, I placed a hundred dollars cash in an envelope with an illegible note and visited the company that Saturday. Dropping the sealed envelope into the night drop, I stole away in my Toyota. Oddly enough, I felt different when I drove down that stretch of El Camino the next day. And I remembered what I had told myself the day I stole the supplies, “It’s like giving yourself a raise.” But it is not. It is stealing. And it is widespread.

When I first started teaching at night, I once “loaned” my copy code to a woman in the adjoining department. It’s just for a few copies, I thought. Two months later, my departmental secretary informed me that I had racked up 3,760 copies on my code. Three-thousand, seven-hundred and sixty. In eight weeks. I learned a valuable lesson–there is a reason we all have our own access codes. At a four-year university on the Peninsula, the Dean of Communications is showing me the mailboxes. Mine will be here—and here is the copy machine.

“Oh,” she said, “until you get your code, you can use mine.”

Seven digits rolled off her tongue. I wrote them down, but I could feel the fear in my belly. Careful, be careful. When I was rewarded with seven digits of my own, I judiciously erased hers from my notepad. Actually I not only erased them–I scribbled over the erased part with a medium blue pen. Just to be sure.

I don’t want to be tempted. It’s the easy way out–but it’s not the right way.

Working on curriculum committees at a campus in San Francisco, I realize that I am part of this thing–this thing called education. I’m proud to be an educator. Yes, I run from campus to campus, from county to county. And I love teaching. This could be the thought process that will keep me from stealing, from pilfering, from moving equipment without permission.

The solution? Police us? Pat us down in the parking lots? Go through our bags? I’m not sure whether it’s something that should be controlled by the administration. I say yes to locked supply cabinets, attended computer rooms, and a sharp eye out for rolling carts. But I also think conscience should be our guide. Those of us with hearts and minds attuned to the welfare of the industry will do the right thing.

So I guess, yes, two medium blue pens will be fine. If I need more, I can come back–right?