. . ."and sitting next to Ed is Esther Rondell, agriculture."
Frank beamed at Esther who simpered in return. A large woman,
Esther wore her white hair in an old fashioned pug at the back.
She had been at Belmont longer than anyone could remember.
She dressed conservatively and was always on university committees.
Esther was at the forefront of every woman's movement on campus.
She was quick to rush to any woman's defense and agree that yes,
they were badly treated. This allowed her a podium to broadcast
how badly she was used by the university. With all her experience,
with all her hard work, she was shafted at every turn, was her cry.
Any serious group of women who might band together to effect change
were usually derailed by her and the administration loved it.
An unsuspecting woman who confided in her thinking she was a fellow
sufferer found to her sorrow that Esther was only out for Esther.
Any confidence given her was nearly always violated. This queen bee
just shrugged and stung them to death.
A cinch, thought Henry.
"Then Professor Jane Astori, physical therapy."
Beside Esther, tiny Jane appeared almost doll-like,
even though she was only a little shorter than average.
Her blond hair was worn long and fastened with a barrette at the back.
It swished like a horse's tail whenever she moved her head.
At 42, she had attained her goal of becoming a professor
and now had her sights on the department chair. She was
adept at playing the system. A political pro.
"Last, but not least, here beside me, is Annette Pringle,
zoology," finished Henry.
Annette nodded in recognition of the introduction and then
turned her eyes again to the stack of papers in front of her.
She was scared. It was her first committee assignment since
her appointment as assistant professor at Belmont and she didn't
want to be here. Everything was wrong about this hearing.
It was plain as could be that Trenchant was being railroaded.
Nobody at Belmont ever considered student feedback forms
anything more than an exercise in futility.
What a nothing, inconsequential charge--yet here she was with
the rest of the panel who all appeared to think this was the
most serious crime since the Holocaust.
Annette hadn't dared to refuse Henry's request after the
way the Vee had questioned her. He had come unannounced to her
office to ask her to serve on this hearing panel. He explained
to her how important serving on university committees could be
and how they beefed up a curriculum vita.
Then, right out of the blue, apropos of nothing he had said,
"I understand you and your friend, Joan, live together."
It could have been just an innocent remark, but Annette,
with years of suspicion and threats to remember, didn't think so.
He knows, she thought and the thought stuck in her throat and choked
her with fear. Her weak protests that she really didn't think
she had experience enough yet to qualify for the panel had been
swept aside and here she was.
Henry's thoughts were similar. He smiled in triumph.
It really paid to check people out carefully. You could find out
the damndest things. Things people were afraid of getting out.
Things Henry could used to control them.
Still smiling, he turned to the papers before him and in rapid order,
introduced into evidence, Medical School Dean Broadhurst's letter of charges,
a memo from the Chairman of NERD, Dr. Lyle Stone, and the two files containing
the material sent out from Belmont to the document examiners.
"These are the items," the Academic Vice President and Chair
of the hearing panel committee asserted, holding up the files,
"that the hearing is about."
"We will commence by having the university's witnesses sworn
in by the court stenographer. The committee will then examine
each of the witness, then the accused may cross examine them.
"After all our witnesses have testified, Trenchant may
examine her witnesses and the committee will cross.
Are there any questions?"
"Yes." Diana said firmly. "You have said that the witness
are to be sworn by the court stenographer and I have no
objection to that. However, I want it in the record that I was
told both by the ombudsman and by you, Mr. Chairperson, that this
would be a typical administrative hearing and that witnesses are
generally not sworn. When they are, it is done by one of the
hearing committee.
"I was further told that recording of the hearing would be by
tape recorder. I find that neither of these two things are true.
"In addition, I want it recorded that I have requested several
times that this hearing be open, and the chair has refused.
The Attorney General's Office has asked to be allowed to send
an observer to this hearing. Their request was denied,
but they were promised a complete transcript of it."
"OK," Henry brushed aside Diana's observations as if they were
of no import, and continued, "we'll call our first witness."
Henry rose and went to get the Lyle Stone, chair of the
Nutrition, Embryology and Radiology Department--NERD.
Lyle was seated directly opposite Trenchant and was sworn
by the stenographer. Under questioning from the committee,
he gave his name and position.
Dr. Lyle Stone was a man totally driven by ambition.
He treated people on two levels. If he needed something from you,
he was most decent, even kindly; if not, he ignored you.
Quick to anger, he rarely checked facts. He took good care
of himself, and at the age of 58, he regularly worked out
at the gym and was seldom sick.
He was, however, short. Shorter than the average man, he tried
to make up the height with bluster. This gave him not only a Banty
rooster approach to life but also may have been why he resembled one.
"How did you become aware of the issue that this panel is investigating?"
Henry continued.
Lyle testified that two years previously, Dr. Randy Fecesi
had come to him with two medical student feedback forms which he
had found. "Students are required to fill out and bring to the
NERD office a questionnaire type form that critiqued each of the
faculty in each course and the course itself," he explained. . .
Student Feedback Forms were initiated at Belmont in the
middle sixties. They were designed to allow the students to
evaluate faculty and courses in response to student demand
that they have a voice in their education. Although the professors
of each course at Belmont routinely handed the forms out and
collected them, they were never taken seriously by any department
or dean unless they were uniformly derogatory to a course
or professor and sometimes, even then, they were ignored.
Mostly, they were treated as a joke by the departments and
a lost cause by the students who never saw any changes made as
a result of their suggestions. The joke was propagated further
when some wag arbitrarily added MUR between the S and FF,
creating the adjusted acronym, SmurFF, from Student Feedback
Form. From that time on, the forms were printed on blue paper.
". . .Randy said that he had found a SmurFF for the radiology
course this year and one from last year that didn't look right
to him. He and Dr. Heathson, who teach the course, wanted me
to send them for handwriting analysis because he thought they
had been written by Trenchant."
Lyle went on to explain at some length that Dr. Randy Fecesi
and Dr. Ian Heathson were young faculty who were trying very hard
to make the radiology course more modern and sophisticated.
These efforts, he asserted, were thwarted by Trenchant and there
was controversy and conflict because of her. . .
When Lyle Stone succeeded Jimbo Jones as head of NERD, he brought
his post doc, Ian Heathson with him. No one on the NERD faculty
was consulted and all of them were very upset that they were given
no voice in a faculty selection. They soon learned that Ian was
a special friend of their chairperson and quickly discovered
that it was not wise to criticize him in any way.
Ian was a real nice, friendly fellow, fairly adept at his
research specialty, nutrition (which was also Lyle's) but
lacking knowledge and understanding of radiology.
Lyle put him in charge of the radiology course given to the
freshmen medical students. This act was similar to throwing a
child into the water and expecting it to learn to swim.
Diana had taught the lab portion of this course for several years.
Ian didn't learn very quickly. He tried, you have to give him that,
but he was way out of his depth. The students, as kindly as possible,
turned thumbs down on him. Not only that, but on their SMurFF's,
they were highly critical of the lecture portion of the course,
which Ian conducted, while praising Trenchant and the laboratory,
especially the laboratory manual which she had written.
The manual had been written out of desperation by Trenchant
on her home computer. Over the years, the radiology lab manual
had degenerated into such a mess that it was difficult to use
and impossible to understand--especially when most of the pages
were unreadable. This was before the department obtained
a copying machine and still used the old fashioned stencils.
So Diana wrote and illustrated an entirely new manual and
she registered the copyright on it. She offered this finished
manual to Ian at no charge for use in the course and he grabbed
it like the drowning man he was. The students had made their
disgust well known to him and he realized that he did not have
the knowledge or experience to produce an adequate laboratory
manual in Radiology.
Things got better in the course. Ian was improving in his
knowledge and lecturing. There was excellent cooperation between
him and Trenchant. That is, until Randy Fecesi was brought in.
Randy came with perhaps even less ability in radiology than Ian,
but where the students were sympathetic toward Ian, they were
pissed off by Randy. The SmurFFs they wrote concerning him were not kind.
Many reprimanded him for things he had said in lectures which were contrary
to what the students read in textbooks. Hurt, angry and unable to get at
the students, he turned on Trenchant. At first, Ian tried to stay neutral
but eventually, Randy convinced him that the course must be reorganized
and they had to start by redoing the laboratory manual.
His solution was to change the only part of the course that really worked!