Boston.com

HAMDEN, Conn. — Fearful that her family would learn she was not graduating, a 22-year-old woman phoned in bomb threats to Quinnipiac University on Sunday to try and force commencement ceremonies to be canceled, police said.

Hamden police said Danielle Shea of Quincy, Mass., gave a detailed confession after being arrested at the indoor campus athletic arena, the TD Bank Sports Center, where the commencement for the university’s College of Arts and Sciences had been moved because of the threats. She was wearing a cap and gown she’d purchased.

Police said Shea didn’t attend the university this year, but her mother paid thousands of dollars she thought was for her daughter’s education. When graduation arrived, Shea panicked when relatives didn’t see her name on the graduation roster, they said.

According to police, Shea made two calls to the university’s public safety department. In the first, about 20 minutes before the start of the 6 p.m. graduation ceremony, she stated there was a ‘‘bomb in the library,’’ said police. In the second call, about 20 minutes later, police said Shea warned ‘‘Several bombs are on campus’’ and noted ‘‘You haven’t cleared out graduation. That’s not a good idea.’’

I saw the initial headlines on this story and thought this was going be your typical “Falling one credit shy” scenarios or “Couldn’t walk because I got too many open container tickets” and I was fully prepared to note that fearing your parent’s disappointment in any of these scenarios was absolutely ridiculous seeing they’ve been cutting tuition checks to Quinnipiac of all places, for a minimum of four years. I’m pretty sure their outrage peaked somewhere between pulling that last rejection letter out of the mailbox from one of the UMASSes and licking the envelope on the first outgoing check. If they haven’t tempered their expectations by now, you shouldn’t care enough to call in a bomb threat, let alone invite them to graduation.

But this is something different. This is a full scale embezzlement scheme that came up impossibly short of a smashing success because she couldn’t figure out how to get someone to say her name into a microphone. That one little detail was the difference. Danielle Shea would’ve been living on easy street back in Quincy with half the debt of her contemporaries and mom and dad wouldn’t have been the wiser. Instead of marching into interviews this summer touting that bulletproof Quinnipiac “Arts and Sciences” degree, she would have been telling real life stories of “a successful track record of long term planning, goal execution, and delivery in a deadline driven environment. “ So close, to being one of the greats. So close.

PS. In fairness to all you sensitive Quinnipiac graduates out there, I only know like five people that have graduated from QU and they all played on the hockey team. It is safe to say that their journey to becoming captains of industry ended well before sixth grade.

Double PS.  I also didn’t get into UMass.  I may have been accepted had I applied, but we’ll never know.