Cambridge key returned 40 years late, avoids £20,000 fine
Former Gonville & Caius College summer student Carla Risoldi returns a room key decades after departure; the college waives a proposed £20,000 fine and marks the gesture with a memento.
A former summer school student at Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge, has returned a room key 40 years after taking it, prompting the college to waive a potential fine of about £20,000. The college said the usual penalty would be an initial £10 fine, plus £10 in interest per week until the key is returned.
Carla Risoldi, who is now an attorney in the United States, studied at Caius for six weeks in 1985 as part of a summer program run through the University of New Hampshire. She handed the obsolete key to Caius’ senior shift porter, John Turton, at the Trinity Street Porters’ Lodge during a recent visit to the UK. Risoldi had previously been a student at the University of Pennsylvania and the Cambridge course was arranged through the University of New Hampshire.
The college said the fine to cover the cost of cutting a new key and any associated interest was waived on this occasion. Carla Risoldi, having returned the obsolete key, was presented with it as a memento of a glorious, formative summer. A spokesman added that, while the calculation was tongue-in-cheek, the policy would be £10 if the key is not returned within 24 hours of checkout, and thereafter £10 per week. Assuming 40 years equates to 2,085 weeks, that would amount to about £20,850 — which was not enforced.
Risoldi’s Cambridge experience remains a notable anecdote about campus life. She attended a six-week course at Caius in 1985, an experience she said helped open up new horizons. Today she practices law in her home country.