No, this was not what caused the problem. This is a RW resource location issue. I have replicated it on several cycles of reinstalling RW according to instructions.
Upon a fresh install of RW, without an option to block it, RW senses that I had RW 6 folders still in my library and automatically begins to copy them into Dropbox. Then when I go to RW preferences and try to redirect the resources to my more recent designated folder of themes, stacks, plugins, it wants to automatically (with no opportunity to say no) copy over the RW 6 era themes (into and replacing newer versions of themes) to my preferred location.
I am pretty frustrated with this!