If Joe gives $5,000 to the Main Street school library, but Jim, the Main Street principal, diverts regular funding for the library by $5,000 and puts that money instead into equipment for the school’s golf team, Jim has effectively ’embezzled’ Joe’s gift on behalf of the golf team.
That’s immoral.
A music teacher for an area school was just forced to resign because she used a sick day to attend a seminar held in New York City. Would the seminar make her a better teacher? Probably. If I’d been the principal, and she’d asked to attend the seminar, volunteering to use one of her sick days to do that, I’d probably have OKed it. In fact, though, she didn’t ask. She simply called in sick.
She was quoted in the Thursday morning newspaper as saying that a teacher’s contract allows her to be fired for immorality, but not for using a sick day when she isn’t sick. Isn’t stealing immoral any more?
I don’t know what those library funds were diverted to, and it doesn’t really matter. I understand that trying to do something with insufficient funds is difficult; I’ve faced that problem many times. However, the proper thing to do would be to ask the donor if the funds could be used for another specific purpose instead. By not asking, that principal puts future donations at risk. And if I were on the school board, that principal would be putting his own job at risk. His contract has a clause allowing him to be fired for immorality as well.
You don’t have to unzip your breeches in order to engage in immoral acts.
