When Norma was in high school, she was driven home from a party by a guy who insisted he was not intoxicated. Alas, he got them into a car accident. He was unscathed while her spine got broken. She ended up hunchbacked and with a limp.
Norma graduated from Leviathan University with a major in psychology and $132,000 in student debt. She couldn’t afford to go to graduate school so she took the best-paying job that she, with her disability, could get: accounts receivable clerk in Leviathan’s bursar’s office.
Norma's job, ironically, was to send billing and then dunning notices to students who were late in paying their student loans, and to respond to in-person pleas for forbearance.
It pained Norma to see the endless line of graduates and dropouts who couldn’t afford to pay. She thought back to when she was in high school and was seduced by Leviathan’s marketing materials that implied that Leviathan graduates are likely to get a well-paying job and indeed, explicitly blaring that misleading statistic, “College graduates earn $1 million more.”

But her job was to get the alumni and dropouts to pay. So, to student after student, she said, “I’m sorry.” And she emailed letter after letter, “Your account is past-due. To avoid additional penalties that accrue when we send delinquent accounts to a collection agency, please remit the balance due within ten days.”
But finally, there was a proverbial straw that broke her back— this time figuratively. A young woman with tearing eyes begged, “I want a job where I can make a difference but I’m saddled by all this debt so I had to take a job selling insurance. I’m not cut out for selling. I’m cut out for helping people. I’ve living in a bad neighborhood with five roommates, and even so, I can’t afford both my rent and my student loan.


Norma teared-up as well and, on impulse, simply zeroed out the student’s account and said, “Mary, your student loan is now paid in full. Go and make a difference.” Mary sputtered, “But, but…”  Norma waved her away. “Just go.”
It didn’t take more than an hour before her boss came in. “Magellan (the computer program) just kicked out a file---‘Mary LeFleur. Yesterday, she had a balance of $107,955 and today it’s zero?” Norma lied, “I have no idea. Must be a computer glitch.”
That bought Norma a little time but she knew that even if she claimed it was a typing error, she’d be out of a job within a day or even go to jail. So she decided to do as much Robin-Hooding as she could in her remaining time.


The next person in line was a hulking guy who came to Leviathan on a football scholarship but after a year, the coach told him there now were better players, and he lost his scholarship. From a middle-class background, he now qualified mainly for loans, not a discount but his parents couldn’t afford to pay all that cash. He told Norma, “If Leviathan hadn't given me the scholarship, I would have gone to community college. But now, I have a year’s worth of credits that may not all transfer and I've made friends here at Leviathan. So I feel stuck. Is there any way you can spread out the payments?” Norma lied again: “I just found a technicality that forgives ex-scholarship athletes for tuition for four years. Congratulations.”

At that moment, Norma’s boss, who had been hiding within earshot, burst out, along with a police officer. “Norma, I can’t believe you stole from the University.” She retorted, “The university sells a defective, very expensive product to thousands of students every year— I just established a return policy.” The student said, “That’s right!”
Nevertheless, the officer handcuffed Norma and took her away. Norma never felt prouder.
The judge found Norma guilty but sentenced her to just 30 days of community service, providing financial-aid counseling to low- and moderate-income high school students