Employees at Missouri State University forgot to do their homework on an order of promotional bags that were given out to students this year. About 6,000 canvas book bags with the school mascot and misspelling “Univeristy” were given to students from the university bookstore.
According to the Springfield News-Leader, MSU spent $70,844 on an order of 17,800 book bags, which were given free of charge to students who pre-ordered their textbooks from the bookstore. In addition to the 6,000 given to students, another 2,500 were destroyed by the university. The school reports that the other half of the order has the correct spelling and will be given out to students in the fall 2013 semester.
The bags were provided by Cares Industry Inc., a direct importer based in Farmingdale, N.Y. The logo design was created by the bookstore’s marketing manager and a proof was approved by bookstore director Mark Brixey in July 2012, meaning the university has no way to dispute the order. A month later, Brixey resigned after auditors discovered that $500,000 was missing in bookstore funds and $81,000 in cash was found in his desk.
The promotional bags were filled by bookstore employees as pre-orders from students came in, with approximately 6,000 bags filled by the start of the semester. Earle Doman, vice president of student affairs at MSU, said that the mistake was first noticed by a student after a few hundred bags had been given out. Bookstore staff continued to hand out the bags after the error was discovered because the bags had already been filled and were waiting for pickup.
Doman indicated that the bookstore staff made the decision without consulting the university. “We would have come up with an alternative,” he explained. “We would have come up with plastic bags had we learned of it. We have talked about those things in the past. It is just not worth it.”
[Image via Springfield News-Leader.]
