“Funky Chairs” and Other Great Reed Admin Venmo Transactions

Venmo. Love it or hate it, it seems to be the easy way to pay people back and get paid back in this day and age. It’s known for its usage by the younger generation, an incredibly useful tool for college students, but plenty of adults use it too, for loan repayments, rent, and the same use as college kids, with their friends – but do they realize these transactions are public? This week the Quest searched up the names of the Reed administrators, and its own editors, on Venmo, to see what they’d been doing. While plenty of them had their accounts marked private, had made no transactions, did not have identifying information to clearly show who they were, or had too many possible accounts (shout out to the 19 Gary Grangers on Venmo), that was not the case for them all.

Emojis were a popular choice of transaction description, with Vice President for Student Life Karnell McConnell-Black receiving multiple payments using them as identifiers, as well as them being Executive Director of Public Affairs and Communications Sheena McFarland’s favorite descriptors, both for sending and receiving payments, including a ticket stub, books, and tacos. Most of the transactions overall were food, including McFarland’s payment titled “Butter heaven” and McConnell-Black being paid for the emojis salad and sandwich, however, they get much more creative. Vice President and Dean of Admission & Financial Aid Milyon Trulove paid someone with the description “For Hal to upgrade Monkey Bloons so I will actually enjoy my games with him!!!” McFarland made multiple payments titled “Hair awesomeness,” and McConnell-Black received an intriguing payment titled “Funky chairs.” In addition to these, McFarland also received many payments in August of 2017 for “Eclipse glasses,” So a lot of people owe her thanks for being able to witness that historical event.The Quest editors had mostly private accounts, however, Lindsey Babcock paid someone for “republican chicken.” While these payments are all benign, there have been instances of Venmo transactions being used in a very serious way, with the case of an aide of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas being paid for a ‘Christmas party’ by lawyers who brought cases to the Supreme Court. Public Venmo transactions are the default, but a quick look into the account settings can change that to friends-only or entirely private, which might be a good idea before taking any bribes, or just as an added layer of security, to limit the ever-growing amount of personal information shared about everyone on the internet.