Students waiting in line to pay their tuition bills Thursday afternoon had to endure unusually long lines while a fellow student paid her bill with all coins.

Dawn Lloyd, a junior marketing major, paid her tuition bill of $252.93 in pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters to protest the actions and employment of a Bursar’s Office staff member.

Lloyd said she was upset with an employee of the Bursar’s Office for an incident which occurred in the summer of 1992.

Lloyd said she began dating the husband of the employee in August 1991, one year after he separated from his wife.

Lloyd said when she paid a tuition bill in summer 1992, the clerk who received her payment was the wife of the man she was dating. Lloyd said the check she used to pay her bill was signed by the Bursar employee’s husband.

About one month later, a photocopy of the check and the payment stub was presented as an exhibit for the Bursar’s Office employee during the divorce hearing, Lloyd said.

Lloyd said she was in attendance at the divorce hearing when the evidence was presented and later called the Bursar’s Office and the office of NIU’s Ombudsman in an attempt to rectify what she thought was an abuse of the employee’s employment position.

About one week later, Lloyd received a call from the Ombudsman who explained to her that for nonvoluntary reasons, the employee was no longer employed by the Bursar’s Office, she said.

In December 1992, however, Lloyd returned to the Bursar’s Office to pay another tuition bill and discovered the employee again was working there, she said.

“It would be great if she was no longer employed by the Bursar’s office,” Lloyd said. “If she was out of the office I’d be happy.”

To protest the employment of and use of the check in a court proceeding by the Bursar employee, Lloyd paid her bill all in coins, she said.

NIU Bursar Richard Cochrane said the employee should not have done what she did. “I think what she did was unethical,” Cochrane said.

He said the employee was considered “extra help,” only brought onto the staff during rush periods.

“She was brought in and reprimanded for her actions,” Cochrane said. “She apologized and said she would not do it again.

“At the time of the initial incident, she was released from this office because we no longer needed her services,” he said. “She was not released because of the incident with the court hearing.”

University Legal Counsel George Shur said he can do three things in this type of situation.

“I make sure the chief operating officer in the department is aware of the incident, I make sure the employee has been reprimanded and I make sure the department is confident the employee has learned a lesson,” Shur said.

He said all three conditions were met in this incident so it no longer was pursued.

“I do think people who deal with certain offices in this university have a right to expect their materials will be kept confidential,” he said.

Shur also said normally this type of material is available through a legal process.

The Bursar’s Office employee could not be reached for comment.