The Union misplaced approximately $3,500 in funds raised by the Vagina Club last year, officials close to the situation said.The funds were raised to benefit the Boston Area Rape Crisis Center last year during the annual Vagina Fest. But the funds were never deposited into the proper bank account and the Student Union paid BARCC approximately $3,500 out of its own operating budget to reconcile the situation.

"I took all the money we had raised and counted it with the [Union] treasurer [Nick Freeman '07]," Sarah Krevsky '08, the finance coordinator for the Vagina Club this year and last, said. "He assured me that he would put it in the bank account."

Union officials said they did not believe that Freeman had acted maliciously.

"In terms of Nick's integrity, I trust him; he did not steal the money," Director of Executive Affairs Adam Gartner '07 said. Brian Paternostro '07, the Union's director of communications, agreed.

Krevsky said Freeman told her by e-mail that the funds were transferred to the proper bank account a week-and-a- half after the deposit was made.

Freeman, currently the Senator for the Foster Mods, said he recalled counting out the money "only because [former director of Social Affairs] Edgar [Ndjatou '06] was in the room and was really freaked out by all the piles of twenties on the table."

Freeman said he went to the Bank of America on Main Street to make the depoist, mostly of cash.

But when Director of Student Activities Stephanie Grimes was asked to issue the check to BARCC for the Vagina Club over the summer (when Union officials are away for the summer, Grimes said she takes on some of their responsibilities), she said she could not find a record of that deposit.

Grimes and Union officials said the cash should have been deposited into a special Union account solely for the purpose of fundraising and not an account for the Vagina Club.

Stephen Costa, a budget analyst in the office of students and enrollment who handles Union finances, said that he and Union officials checked other Brandeis bank accounts to find the missing money, unsuccessfully.

"We investigated and we couldn't find any of it," Costa said. "If it was deposited, and I don't know if it was,I have no way of proving it one way or another."

Costa said multiple efforts to find the money including checking the accounting program for various University accounts, the University charge line, seeing if the Controller's office had any items it could not reconcile and investigating into similarly numbered bank accounts at Bank of America, didn't result in finding the money.

Ernesto Anguilla, a representative from Bank of America, said the Bank couldn't comment on specific customer issues for security reasons.

"I remember giving [the money] to the teller," Freeman said. "She was confused because Brandeis has so many accounts with the bank, but she called over a manager and everything went fine."

The deposit slip for the transaction was never found, which seemed to frustrate Costa and other Union officials.

"The big question was that nobody could find the deposit slip," Freeman said. "I put it in a file that hasn't been found. Harrison did a rip apart job of all the files," referring to Harrison Chizik '07 who was elected treasurer in the spring of 2006, but resigned over the summer when he withdrew from the University.

The Union took money out of its operating budget to go to BARCC, Paternostro said. "It was our error, so we ponied up the money."

"It all works out in the end," Krevsky said. "[The Union] very much wanted to find the money. The bottom line for us is we want to make sure all the money we raise goes to BARCC."

"As far as what happened to the original deposit, nobody knows," Costa said. "We pretty much exhausted all efforts to find it."



Editor's Note: Abra Lyons-Warren, the managing editor of the Justice, and Shana D. Lebowitz, a staff writer, are members of the Vagina Club.