That which compelled me to write this piece was a recent blitz from the staff of Baker library saying that they had located my copy card in the Reference Room of the library and would I please come and retrieve it. The blitz was a welcome one, and I am pleased at the prospects of reuniting myself with my copy card tomorrow, except for the fact that I have not visited the Reference Room since last winter. In fact, I lost my copy card in the Baker stacks a week ago when I was in a rush, had a few journal articles to photocopy and neglected to retrieve my card from the infernal card-accepting machine after it had finished draining my copying balance. Incidentally, I had loaded that card with $10 worth of copying potential the day I lost it, eight dollars of which remained after my copying spree. Imbuing my card with more than a dollar or two was probably a silly move on my part, but at the time I restocked my card I carried only a $10 bill in my wallet and anticipated engaging in some heavy photocopying action in the upcoming week. Also incidentally, I had written my (quite legible) signature across the back of the card when I first obtained it.
It is interesting to consider the intended purpose of the signature strip on copy cards. Credit cards obviously have signature strips so that retail personnel can verify the signature on a sales receipt by matching it to the back of the credit card. I myself was a shoe salesperson at Nordstrom for several years and am only too familiar with the procedure. I do not know of anybody assigned to verify copy card signatures, however, so the purpose of the copy card signature strip must be otherwise.
The only logical guess I have is that the signature strip allows helpful persons like those on the library staff to reunite lost cards and any balances they may carry with their owners. What then piques my curiosity is why somebody took the card I had so nicely marked as my own from the Baker stacks to the Reference Room instead of attempting to return it to me. Certainly, if the card had been found in a Boston gutter or the New York Public Library it would have been understandable for a finder to refrain from an attempt to track down the card's owner. Likewise, if the card were empty of a cash balance or if I had neglected to sign it, an attempt to return it to me would clearly have been near futile and difficult to accomplish without resorting to trained bloodhounds. But when the person who used my card was confronted with a money-bearing, signed card on a cozy campus like Dartmouth's, a campus outfitted with a reliable, user-friendly and ubiquitous system of communication and tracking down strangers, this ethical lapse is more puzzling.
Here is why it puzzles me: The person enjoying his or her Reference Room photocopies as you read this would rather have had eight dollars of somebody else's money and been a thief than not have had eight dollars of somebody else's money and been an honest person. Shoplifters of inexpensive items commonly rationalize their acts with the explanation that their petty crimes do not really matter in the scheme of things because they only rob the stores of a few dollars. And certainly in the legal world, it is a far lesser offense to rob a store of a two dollar item than of a two hundred dollar item. But there is another way to look at the two actions. In the latter instance, you certainly may be a criminal, but now you have a sweet little $200 stereo to show for it. The action is still not right, or course, but the trade-off at least makes some sense. In the former case, however, you have decided to be a thief and a dishonest person and all you have in exchange for this defamation of your own character is a King Size Kit-Kat bar. That seems like one hell of a deal to me. One would think that the satisfaction and pride one gains from the knowledge of one's own strong values and good character would be far more valuable a thing to a person than the acquisition of an item of cheap food.
I do believe that the person who was willing to steal money from me in the form of photocopies would certainly never have taken it directly from my wallet or purse. Taking advantage of someone else's lost copy card certainly seems a more discreet misdeed than wresting physical cash from a physically present person. Isn't my money still gone, however? Haven't I still paid for a stranger's photocopies -- a stranger who could not do me the service of logging on to BlitzMail and telling me he or she had found my card? Of course I have. This fact, though, however annoying, does not make me nearly as unhappy as the knowledge that a person with whom I share this campus found it more desirable to steal money from a fellow student than to commit an easy act of kindness and decency.
