By Mike Wishart
Ladies and gentlemen. We as a collective community have been duped. One hundred thousand dollars were stolen right from under our noses. How was this done? How could somebody have taken such a large sum of money from our beloved university without anybody noticing?
I know what you may be thinking. Were precious works of art stolen from the Fairfield University Art Museum? Or was the university robbed of property like computers and television screens? Did the thief take the money from underneath Marc Nemec’s mattress?
But the thief was not that bold. What happened to our community was the result of years of careful conning and planning, and striking at just the right moment.
The prime suspect, Professor Zaroff (whom campus authorities renamed Professor Sneaky until they conclude their investigation) laid the groundwork for his heist 10 years ago when he got the job as a history professor at Fairfield University. He continued to teach at the university, committing the occasional petty crimes of missing his office hours or taking a month to grade assignments.
But this semester, upon getting tenure, Zaroff graduated to major crime. Having worked at the school and knowing its inner workings, Zaroff had mechanisms in place for money to be deposited into his bank account. Once the $100,000 was deposited into his account, Professor Zaroff was never seen again on campus or online. Reports say that he was last seen in a Zoom meeting this past September 1st by the students of his course “Slice of History: The Story of the Sliced Bread in America”. Professor Zaroff gave no hints toward the reason for his disappearance, laying out the course load for the semester and saying it is important that students don’t fall behind on work despite the COVID-19 pandemic.
We have tried to reach out to Professor Zaroff for comment, but he did not respond to any of our emails, phone calls, letters, faxes, or Myspace IMs. Authorities suspect Zaroff was also the perpetrator of a robbery from the university for $50,000 last semester, wherein he accepted a load of teaching several courses and then was completely absent for all of them. If you have any information regarding where Professor Zaroff may be, or if you suspect another professor of pulling off a similar heist, please contact Stagnation. We actually will reply to emails.
Stagnation 