Celebrating My Imminent Degree

Last week, Scott and I attended a senior send off party at OSU for all graduating students. Yes, I am practically walking down the aisle to receive my diploma as you read this. I'm happy to say that last night I finished my FINAL final in the OSU MBA program! Unless I completely bombed the test, this girl will have a graduate degree this week. *cue the fanfare*

So of course I was excited to celebrate my imminent degree by dressing up for a 1920's themed graduation party hosted by the alumni association. Scott was so excited to have an excuse to wear his fedora that he wore the hat out to dinner before we went to the party. Of course it wasn't weird at all for Scott to be wearing a suit and fedora in a public restaurant...

The senior send off event was pretty fun, though it was a bit chaotic. The party was basically a large casino, set up with blackjack and roulette tables. The alumni association provided fake money to all the graduates and their guests. They had a DJ, drinks, photo booth, and prizes.

We stayed two hours and only played one game, roulette, because by the time we figured out how to play any of the casino games, the alumni center was packed with hundreds of graduates and all the game tables were full. We had each been given 1000 fake dollars. Being naïve to gambling strategy, Scott and I decided we would not play for prizes bur rather until we were no longer interested.

We learned to play roulette from one of the table dealers. I think this casino company was used to smaller parties, as opposed to hundreds of college students, full tables of guests, waiting players, and roulette chips/markers in addition to the house money chips used throughout the event. Our table dealer was pleasant, despite the chaos.

At one point in the evening, a rowdy group of young men came up to the table and asked to exchange their play money for higher value chips. Our table dealer readily supplied them with those chips, and the boys laid most of them down to be lost. After the round was over they soon disappeared, without cashing out back to house money chips. Once our dealer finally noticed they were gone, he cleared out their space for others to join.

About two hours after the party began, we were starting to feel overwhelmed with the atmosphere and ready to go home. We decided to go all in and either bank our winnings into prize tickets or go pretend-broke and head home. The same rowdy boys returned suddenly with STACKS of their color marker chips and said, "Do you remember we had our chips for $100 each? Well we're here to play again."

Our dealer was so flustered with all the random bets on the table, including all our casino chips which we had cashed in order to go all in. Scott and I instinctively knew that the boys chips could not have come from our table, but we were also flustered by what was going on. I wish I would have said something, like "Excuse me, but you will have to take those game markers back to the table you came from. Only the casino chips are transferrable between tables." But I didn't. I let it play out, because I still wasn't completely certain that they had not won the chips at our table and mistakenly taken them away.

But really, I knew. I had that feeling. I knew by their demeanor that they were trying to game the system and make a profit. What they said when they came back to the table was probably the clearest sign that they were trying to get back into good graces instead of resuming normal play. If the event had been more organized, these boys wouldn't have even been able to move the chips from table to table in the first place.

I regret not saying anything in the moment, pointing out the ethical violation of these soon-to-be-graduates, but luckily karma came to my rescue. They lost all of their chips by chance that very same round.

We lost too, as it so happened. I guess karma kicked us a little too for our sin of omission. We didn't feel the loss of our play money, though. We happily drove home to rest for the evening.

Remind me again why OSU doesn't require an ethics course in their business programs?