By: Sean O’Brien
Assistant Opinion Editor
What kind of pathetic excuse for a higher mammal would steal from newborns?
Late Monday night, a March of Dimes donation box stationed in Café La Verna was found in the café seating area, ripped open and allegedly looted of all the donations that were inside, according to a tip from an eyewitness.
In other words, there is allegedly a person (or persons) in the St. Bonaventure community who sees no problem in taking funds that do not belong to them. Funds that true Bonnies gave an organization that works to ensure, through research and caretaking, the health of newborn babies.
The March of Dimes, a charity organization whose mission is to research and ultimately prevent health issues in newborn babies. The group also aims to increase awareness of many potential health issues, such as premature births and other defects.
According to the donation boxes themselves, the funds help cover the costs of life-saving therapies when a baby is unfortunate enough to be born prematurely and help educate the parents and comfort them in a difficult time. The funds also help provide blood screening in newborns as an early catch for any looming illnesses and help pay for research to reduce the number of infants born prematurely.
I can’t even play devil’s advocate in this situation. Some criticize organizations like the March of Dimes for not actually providing funds for the faces of the charity. For example, there is a rumor that says the March of Dimes mentions dimes in its name because they only actually give 10 cents of every dollar raised.
So if our little thief thought: “Yeah, it’s no big deal that I take the money, it’s not like they’d see that much of it anyways. There’s what, two bucks and change in here? It’s not like they’ll get more than a dollar, anyways.”
And our thief would be right. The babies won’t get more than a dollar benefit; they’ll get quite a bit less.
They’ll get no benefit, because someone, the thief, took their money.
It is incredible that someone – at a Franciscan university, no less – apparently is so wrapped up in themselves, or in impressing their buddies, or whatever other not-nearly-adequate excuse the alleged thief is telling themself in order to sleep at night. It’s incredible that they would allegedly be willing to take money from babies who could seriously benefit from it.
Taking away donation money is even worse than taking candy from a baby. At least candy isn’t really something babies should have, but donation money is an entirely different matter. Donation money is beneficial to the baby. By taking donation money, you are depriving a child of a necessity, thereby harming it.
It’s just depressing. You’d think that once high school was behind us, we’d at least have some of the maturity of an adult. But no, it would seem that someone is still juvenile and selfish enough to stoop to such lows. My only hope now is most of the student body is as outraged as I am that one of our classmates could possibly be so casually heartless.
What scarier is that the responsible party might not even realize how serious what he or she has allegedly done was. They very well might have been walking through La Verna, happened to notice the donation box, and thought, “Hey, sometimes there’s money in those. I like money,” before allegedly helping themselves. In doing so, the person in question would, out of reckless selfishness would still be harming a baby, now out of simple ignorance.
Regardless of the reason behind it, this sort of behavior completely undermines the principles of St. Bonaventure University and must stop.
The act of theft spits in the face of any of St. Francis’ practices, and deserves swift retribution. If the responsible party is caught, I truly hope that the university deals with it as harshly as can be justified.
Even if they don’t, I’d like to sit down with the responsible party. I’ve never knowingly had a conversation with such a prime example of bipedal slime before, and it’d be nice to let the alleged perpetrator know how little respect I, and I would hope the rest of the university by proxy, now have for them.
obriensp11@bonaventure.edu
