Cedar Grove Middle Schools wants to raise money for a new sound system for its auditorium. The primary fundraising event is a dance at which the most famous disc jockey Obnoxious AI will play classic and not-so-classic dance tunes. Roger DeMaster, the music and theater instructor, has been given the responsibility for coordinating the fundraising efforts. This is Roger's first experience with fundraising. He asks the Student Representative Council (SCR) to help him with the event.

Roger had 500 unnumbered tickets printed for the dance. He left the tickets in a box on his desk and told the SCR students to take as many tickets as they thought they could sell for $5 each. In order to ensure that no extra tickets would be floating around, he told them to dispose of any unsold tickets. When the students received payment for the tickets, they were to bring the cash back to Roger. He then put it in a locked box in his desk drawer.

Some of the students were response for decorating the gym for the dance. Roger gave each of them a key to the money box. He told them if they took money out to purchase materials, they should put a note in the box saying how much they took and what it was used for. After two weeks, the money box appeared to be getting full, so Roger asked Freda Stevens to count the money, make a deposit slip, and deposit the money in a bank account Roger had opened.

The day of the dance, Roger wrote a cheque form the bank account to pay Obnoxious AI. AI said that he accepted only cash and did not give receipts. So Roger took $200 out of the cash box and gave it to AI. At the dance, Roger had Sara Billings working at the entrance of the gym. She collected tickets from students and sold to those who had pre-purchased them. Roger estimated that 400 students attended the dance.

The following day Roger closed the bank account, which had $250 in it. He gave that amount plus the $180 in the cashbox to Principle Skinner. Principle Skinner seemed surprised that, after generating roughly $2000 in sales, the dance netted only $430 in cash. Roger did not know how to respond.