The university PR system was cranked up to its fullest. Letters were sent out to various alumni groups around the country and speakers to these groups were alerted and advised. The trashing of Diana blossomed into an intellectual lynching of the lowest order. Much later on, as people came to understand that the university had not complied with the findings of the court and Attorney General, there was a general loss of respect for Belmont which contributed to a decrease in enrollment.
The official Belmont University response was delivered by the public relations spokesperson who dismissed the LOD as, "inconsequential. I don't know what all the fuss is about," he said. "When you cut through the fancy title at the top it's just a lawyer's opinion." No one else at Belmont was available for comment.
The Pope did know what all the fuss was about and was stung by the words of condemnation contained in the LOD. He immediately called his contact at the Washington DC office of the EEOC. He complained fiercely that the LOD never gave the university's side of the question. "No one here was interviewed by the investigator from the Attorney General's Office," he protested peevishly.
He got that right!
His contact got his protest an immediate hearing by the EEOC chairman, who directed the regional office to quash the Attorney General's LOD. No one in the head office bothered to read the LOD and learn that the reason there were no interviews of university personnel because they refused to cooperate with the investigation. Friends in high places, indeed.
In addition, The Pope called a meeting to discuss their court strategy. "Now," The Pope said forcefully, "It's time we did something to end the legal hassle. That damned judge! And, this A.G. letter on top of it. We are getting too much bad publicity. The letters and phone calls are driving everyone crazy around here. It's gone on long enough—too long!" Sitting around the conference table in the west wing of his office with him was Murrain, Henry Tarbuck and Jimbo.
Murrain spoke confidently. "The court business is nearly finished. I have already petitioned the judge for permission to start discovery. Unless the plaintiff is sitting on a gold mine, that will finish off her bank account right there."
"How's that?" asked Jimbo.
"During discovery, we take depositions. Al Garret will have to depose a lot more witness than we do in order to even come close to presenting his case. Conservatively speaking, he's looking at nearly a thousand bucks a day that he must bill Trenchant.
"And that's not even the best part." Murrain caressed his face with his hand as if re-oiling the smile on its surface. "I'll coach our people in evasive answers, which means that it will take days of deposition time for him to get the information that an unprepared witness would give in a hour.
"Good." The Pope was pleased.
Not so pleased was Al Garret and the plaintiff. Both attorneys had agreed some months ago that the process of discovery would not be commenced until the judge had given his final ruling on the motions and the trial date set. Murrain delivered his low blow without missing a beat. "Oh," he cooed when Al called him to complain, "I must have misunderstood. I thought you wanted to get started before the final ruling."
Al was outclassed and he knew it. Apologetically, he called the plaintiff and drew her the financial picture. An appeal to the judge for permission to delay discovery was ignored—Murrain had carefully picked his time. It was one of the last orders the judge signed before departing on his vacation.
That's all she wrote, Diana acknowledged In debt and unemployed, she dropped her illegal-termination suit against Belmont University.
Deep within the bowels of the Belmont library building, the university archivist, Igor O'Toole, had been keeping an informal running tally of events relating to the SmurFF Affair. He had gleaned the information from his friend, Diana, confirmed gossip, media sources, university documents and private sources which he knew to be reliable and would not reveal. He had, over the past two years, posted it in a scrapbook.
His interest had been whetted when the story first broke. Everyone repeating it on campus was incredulous....termination for cause on account of seven SmurFFs? Really? It must be a joke.
But Igor, casting out his informational net, discovered that it wasn't. It was discrimination, pure and simple and he, because of his race, knew discrimination when he came on it.
He remembered how close he had come to not landing his present position. A man in his late forties, he had impeccable credentials and years of experience in archival work. He was also an African American. Strong, competent and unassuming, he had applied for the posted position of senior archivist and then waited for the decision from personnel.
Time passed. They told him they were still interviewing, but he had learned from a contact he had made in the library that they had reposted the advertisement for the job because no qualified applicants had been sent from personnel. That was how Igor's pool of informational sources began.
Then suddenly, he was called in for an interview. By now his contacts had grown and he discovered that his name had won him the job. Someone in the personnel department had inadvertently listed him to the library as a viable candidate based on his last name.... obviously Irish. His race had been overlooked.
The library director was delighted with his credentials and called him in for an interview. This firmly established to all and sundry that he was black. Back then, tokenism was rampant so when the director hired him, the administration went along with it, albeit reluctantly. After all, the archives were in the basement, who would notice?
Now having enjoyed many years at Belmont and made many friends, he was turning the last few pages of his scrapbook. It was by now a huge tome, meticulously kept and recently augmented by Diana's contribution of letters, court papers and related documents. He had reached the final section dealing with the people involved and the aftermath.
Grimly, he noted that despite the several instances of plagiarism committed by the two faculty men, Ian Heathson and Randy Fecesi, they were promoted and given tenure. The years of adverse student evaluations of their teaching abilities were all thrown out on the basis of five 'suspect' ones and Henry's report.
Randy, at the insistence of the medical students, was moved out of the medical radiology course and into an undergraduate nutrition course. A year later there were problems involving some of the young women in the course. The women were hushed up and Randy was given an immediate sabbatical of indefinite length.
Ian continued in the radiology course but was never able to capture any grants to continue his research.
The best all around teacher in NERD, fed up to the gills with having to continually save the department's teaching bacon, quit and moved away. This excellent teacher, Ray Stinnis, could no longer turn his back on the rampant dishonesty inherent in the department—the treatment afforded Diana had been the last straw.
After Ray's departure, Lyle Stone was forced to give lucrative courses up to other departments. The resulting decrease in revenue caused a severe decline in his research programs and plans were underway to abolish the NERD entirely.
Frank Anuse had suffered a near fatal heart attack. Months later when he returned to work, it was reported that he was a changed man. His attitude toward the women in his sector improved and it was reported that he regretted his role on the Trenchant panel.
Esther received the promised promotion and a raise. A year later, she was retired—broken and unhappy.
Annette quit her position and moved out of the area with her roommate.
Jane, who had been tenured, left. The circumstances were never divulged.
Jimbo and Dean Broadhurst were quietly retired.
An administrative intern in The Pope's office was summarily fired for injudiciously stating that it would have been more cost effective to retire Diana than spend the thousands of dollars to terminate her.
"You see," he explained to the assembled president and Vees, with more ignorance than good sense, "Our current policy would have paid for her retirement without any further outlay of monies on our part. The hearings, document examiners, courts and subsequent damage control has cost nearly one hundred thousand dollars."
Still reading, Igor marveled at how the ripples created by Diana's struggle had widened and spread out of Belmont into the state. Her short but important court venture resulted in twenty areas of state statutes cited. These annotated statutes served to strengthen the application of the cited state laws to Belmont. Using these laws, a faculty union was kindled and an Animal Rights Organization sued successfully to attend Belmont animal research meetings.
Applications for enrollment decreased as many became turned off by Belmont's noncompliance with the law.
The legislature of the state became disenchanted with the university because of the notoriety, and decreased its annual appropriation. A legislative investigation was initiated to ascertain the number and salaries of the central administration of Belmont.
The Pope felt the heat and got out of the kitchen—very suddenly. An interim president was appointed by the trustees.
Henry Tarbuck elected to stay when the new president came on board and was demoted to an associate Vee. His wife successfully sued for divorce and Henry's claim for alimony was denied by the judge. This meant that he had to go back to living on his own salary.
Two women successfully brought charges of sexual harassment against a Belmont administrator. A court subsequently awarded them nearly a million dollars in compensatory and punitive damages.
So many sex discrimination cases were initiated by Belmont staff that the new administration created an entire unit to investigate and put out fires.
Diana applied for unemployment compensation which the Belmont administration opposed on the grounds that she was discharged for dishonesty. At the State Employment Service hearing, Diana submitted the Judge's Order and the LOD from the Attorney General.
Although the entire upper administrative wing of the personnel department appeared to testify against her, the Employment Service hearing officer decided that she had been unfairly terminated. She drew unemployment checks for only a few weeks. They enabled her to get by until plans for self-employment could be formulated. Continuing in her teaching career was out—no references would be forthcoming from her last employer. She started a small delivery business from her home and with that, her friends and Social Security, she managed all right.
Igor O'Toole put his scrapbook aside, then stood up and stretched. Back at his work bench, preserving, repairing and reconstructing the tomes of human accomplishments, mistakes and history, he ruminated on how the more things change, the more they remain the same.
The structure of all but the most recently birthed colleges and universities is rigid, he observed to the roll of transparent tape he was using to repair still another torn page. Their medieval trappings, so obvious at historic functions, may appear invisible in other facets of existence. None the less, these trappings still exist.
Patterned much like the society of monks, higher educational administrations still follow a monolithic, generally white male-dominated path even though modern times have seen the enrollment of women students, the hiring of women faculty and even women in central administrative posts. But it's a facade. The real discipline, established centuries ago, is maintained and furiously guarded.
For a while, the newer laws of the seventies relating to affirmative action suggested that there would be a break in the male bastion. Time proved, however, that sex discrimination and sexual harassment laws were never well enforced and were being slowly destroyed by the Supreme Court.
Continuing his mentation, Igor allowed as how, like the monastery, the university structure is maintained because it is supported throughout the governmental system of a state or country.
Now comes the turn of ethnicity as students of all races, religions and creeds are storming the ancient fortifications. Thus far, they have not even cracked the surface. What appears to be maneuvers that should embarrass a university administration only serve to entrench it even more.
At Belmont, the student's attempts to force political correctness—PC, on the administration culminated in a takeover of their offices. Nothing new here. This has happened at many universities all over the country. The result of the takeover, far from enlightening the powers that be, only delighted the Belmont administration.
As student protests do every time, he reflected, they take the public's attention away from the stench of the secret university policies and procedures and place it on the antics of the students. Most always, student protests involved property destruction. As a result, public opinion turns against student innovators or bell ringers. The cause of their protest—entrenched, polluted power—is again shrouded by the ignorance that gave it birth in the middle ages.
Igor yawned and scratched his chin. Most of the collected intelligence and experiences of the world is in this library, he reminded himself, but few avail themselves of it. Upstairs now, you don't even have to search through books for whatever you're looking for, you just punch up a computer and it collects everything ever written on any subject you can think of.
But with all these wonderful strides in disseminating information, he marveled, the people running this place act just like they always have. Tradition covers a multitude of sins and power corrupts now just as it used to.
Too bad most young people don't realize how much their protests just solidify the status quo, or rather, most of them don't. Igor smiled to himself as he glanced at the clock.
Diana would be back by now. Time to give her a call. He sat down at his desk and dialed the phone.
"Thought I'd find you in. I've just been thinking about our little project and taking a lot of comfort from it."
He listened briefly, then said, "Just thought it was too bad that most young folks waste their efforts so. Not like those two young women upstairs. They are exceptions."
Listening again, he answered, "Yes, they are good friends and just as upset as me over the SmurFF fiasco. Well, we have begun something that will have an effect for some time to come."....
"Me? I'm tickled pink to have had a part in an endeavor which, in the Baconian sense, allows, '....a kind of wild justice' to prevail....
"Well, yes, I am still angry at the way Dan Field acted when the students came to him on your behalf, Diana. This guy claimed to be so strong for human rights, claimed to represent the blacks and other down-trodden and he crapped out. No doubt about it, he had the position and the clout to have stopped this thing in its tracks. He was the administrations's visible token black.
"And that brother in the EEOC. Surely, as head honcho, he should have checked the facts before blindly bowing to political pressure....
"Well yes, thank you. I, Igor have made up for both of those Oreos. I have made Afro-Americanism stand for something positive at Belmont."
Smiling now, he reviewed with her the culmination of the combined efforts of those two women upstairs, Diana and himself.
Pooling their knowledge of computers, they had formulated and introduced a harmless virus into the library computer which had already spread throughout this library and beyond. And it would continue to spread. The contents of his scrapbook, along with all the originals of the documents Diana could produce, had been incorporated into the viral computer program so that whenever anyone queried information on any relevant topic, the SmurFF Affair at Belmont would be targeted. The true facts of the good ol' boy conspiracy against Diana Trenchant could no longer be hidden by the administration.
Any interested person would be able to access all of the letters and documents relating to it. The entire transcript, attorney briefs, Attorney General's LOD and all the shady meetings and despicable planning engaged in by the power structure of Belmont University would be instantly available in menu form on their computer screen. The virus would see to that and good old human curiosity would do the rest.
Still smiling, Igor said, "So long and take care. I'll talk to you tomorrow."
Picking up his jacket, he turned off the lights. Another day—well, it would seem good to get home.
Upstairs, as he passed between the desks of Roz and Andrea, the women who had made such fantastic use of the contents of his scrapbook, he paused. Holding up both arms, palms flat out, he said, "Good night, my friends. Have a nice evening....and thank you."
Slapping his palms in unison, with grins broad enough to span the universe, they returned the greeting and the emotion.