I wish to voice a concern on behalf of Northern’s employees.

Last week, my husband started a ten-page paper for one of his grad classes. He had a lot of writing to do. Needless to say, he was going to need a lot of scratch paper.

As any student can attest, some of the best scratch paper around is the stuff one can find in the recycling bins in the computer labs on campus.

So that is where Joe went to look for his scratch paper. He found a big hunk and brought it home and started his paper.

Nothing wrong with this. Since I needed a lot of paper to study for my own test, I swiped from the bottom of his printout (hoping he wouldn’t notice).

I looked at the other side of some of the sheets out of curiosity. The sheets were full of names, account numbers, social security numbers, index numbers, and check amounts. The headings on the sheets read “Edit/Register-Payroll Checks.”

So what? I still used the stuff as scratch paper and so did Joe. But I’d think I’d be a little upset if I were one of the people on that list.

I’ll bet they never figured some students had access to their personal business. I recognized quite a few names. If I found this payroll register, I can’t help but wonder who else has found what else?

I don’t know if someone was doing something they shouldn’t have been doing and carelessly left the register in the recycling bin or if Northern just disposes of its paperwork in this fashion.

Whatever the case, I think a paper shredder would be much more appropriate.

Barbara Gridley

Senior

Computer Science