In the wake of the Enron scandal, it's tough to trust the accounting of any big organization.
Thankfully, the Residence Halls Association has proven itself trustworthy. In May, RHA officials discovered some unusual expenditures on their monthly ledger and started an investigation. It turns out someone had embezzled $4,500 and spent it on gift cards from Best Buy and Value City.
It's unfortunate this type of thing would happen in the first place, but RHA has done a bang-up job of handling the incident - the first of its kind for RHA. Less than a week after the ledger was reviewed, evidence was handed to the MSU police. Last week, a warrant was issued for the arrest of Gary A. Shivers, a 2005 MSU graduate formerly in charge of RHA's major accounts.
We often give MSU's student government a hard time for squandering money and inefficiency, but this situation should help build a better reputation for RHA. Despite looking bad on the surface, this incident reveals some integrity within the organization's current leadership.
Yes, it is clear RHA officials might have made a poor hiring decision, and hopefully they will learn from this. But rather than covering up the mistake, they were honest and fully open with the taxpaying public about the situation. RHA President Kevin Newman made a noble move by coming forward with the information about the embezzlement on his own accord.
Actions are the basis for trust. There was a mistake, but it was caught. As Newman said, "The system worked just like it was supposed to." Even if there are some bad apples, at least there is a safety net so the organization as a whole - as well as the student body - doesn't suffer. According to Newman, each month's budget is reviewed carefully. Given that RHA deals with hundreds of thousands of student tax dollars, this is good to know.
The question now is how RHA will prevent this from happening again. Currently, it's getting bids from accounting firms to assess their practices.
The way RHA officials handled this incident should bring more trust to the organization.
They've earned it.
