When people walk up to Melissa Schneider on Locust Walk and ask her if she shredded documents as a summer intern for Arthur Andersen Accounting, she just laughs.
Despite the accounting firm's recently publicized involvement in the Enron Corp. scandal, Schneider, a Wharton senior, has accepted an offer to work for the company full time after she graduates in May. She will be working in Transfer Pricing, an economic consulting group within Andersen's Tax and Business Advisory division.
And Schneider is not the only Penn student who is excited to work for the company that has come under public scrutiny in recent months.
Andersen, Enron's external accounting firm, is accused of participating in and then covering up illegal transactions made by the energy corporation. Subsequently, some experts have questioned Andersen's ability to succeed in the future with this blemish on their record.
But students hired by Andersen seem to be confident that the company, named one of Fortune Magazine's 100 Best Companies to Work For in 2000, will be in business for a long time and do not feel very differently about the company because of its cooperation with Enron accountants.
"Eighty-five thousand other employees were not working on the Enron account and did not have anything to do with what happened with it," Schneider said, adding that the different divisions within Andersen mostly work independently of each other so that people working in any division but accounting probably had very little to do with the Enron account.
An Andersen spokeswoman who spoke on the condition of anonymity also anticipates a bright future for the company.
"We've been around for a long time, and we expect to be around for a lot longer," the spokeswoman said. "We have 85,000 people around the world doing great work for great clients and getting great experience every day."
The company is currently taking action to ensure hired students that they will have jobs for next year.
Schneider has already received her signing bonus, has been in constant e-mail contact with recruiters and has received phone calls reassuring her that Andersen will uphold its employment offer.
"It's our longstanding policy to honor all employment offers," Andersen's spokeswoman said. "We're pleased that students are standing by us.
"Our people are continually engaged in dialogues with students and faculty," the Andersen spokeswoman added. "We know that people have questions for us right now and we're being responsive because we value our relationships with students and faculty."
Andersen has been actively recruiting on Penn's campus for both full-time employees and summer interns throughout the year.
Last Wednesday night, during the frenzy of summer internship on-campus interviews, Andersen held a reception for prospective interns and hired seniors at the Sheraton University City.
At the reception, one of the senior managers from the Philadelphia office spoke about the Enron issue and said that the media has "sensationalized" most of what is being said.
Dana Lee, another Wharton senior hired by Andersen, said the way the company has dealt with the Enron scandal makes her feel more comfortable with her choice to work for the company.
"While it was not our intention to be in this situation, we have gotten the opportunity to see how the company deals with an event like this," Lee said.
Lee also commented that some of her friends do not have jobs at all, and she is glad that she is not in that situation.
"In this economy, I am very happy to have a job for next year. I feel very confident with my decision and the firm I chose," she said.
Both Lee and Schneider said they feel that they might not be as confident about their jobs for next year if they had been hired to work for the audit department, which was more involved with the Enron account.
