Can I just walk into a professor's office at a university?

I thought the exact same thing.... and with no proof other than my say so that I'm a relative!

Yes, I did wonder about that too. It was that easy to convince them she’s the guy’s niece? And how convenient that they preserved his office for more than a year , and nobody bothered to look through his stuff

Yeah, I don't think they'd just take someone's word for it when a young person came around claiming to be related to a missing college professor.

Also hard to believe no one had thoroughly gone through his things. The woman who showed her to his office said students put together a fund to pay for keeping his office as it was. If someone disappears like that, that'd be one of the first places police and anyone else trying to figure out what happened would look. Dakota seems to have been the first one to look around for clues there, though.

My question is why would a university just keep a long-dead professor’s office in tact for years? They would eventually have to hire a new professor to fill that vacant spot and that professor would need an office.