"The hearing? Oh yes, that is being held in this room right here," advised Lorraine Debeau, head custodian of Howard Hall.
Diana Trenchant and her witnesses had arrived early. One of the witnesses asked Lorraine where the group might wait.
"There are two rooms I was told to open. This is the best one right opposite the hearing room," she offered, walking ahead of them into the room, proud as a general leading the troops to battle. "I'll give you guys the best one since you are here first and because of what you are doing."
As she turned to leave the room, she put her hand on Trenchant's shoulder. "Hey, good luck. You know, you are the only person that ever tried to help us custodians get a fair shake. When you were head of the Staff Association, you made those guys in administration treat us decent."
The six witnesses and Trenchant spread themselves out comfortably on the plush sofas and soft rug as individual preference dictated. Good feelings washed over them, mixed with pride and determination. It was as if their cause, their righteous quest, had been anointed by a high priestess.
"It's nice to have friends in high places," commented Andrea, looking around appreciatively. They were in a large, rectangular room outfitted as a lounge. At the front facing the entrance hall, the walls gave way to glass, so it was something like being in a fish bowl. Someone suggested shutting the curtains but Helen objected.
"No, don't. I want to watch for them to come in. I'm going to take their pictures."
There was general laughter at this and Andrea slapped her on the back, "go gittum, Helen."
Roz advised the other witnesses not to be intimidated by the panel. "Hey, I've known most of them for years and they are no better than we are." She had held a full time job at Belmont for nearly two years. Roz had been around and was no spring chicken so the group nodded and took comfort from her.
She, like some of the other witnesses, was also taking courses in the nursing school. One of these courses was taught by Diana Trenchant.
"Look, here they come now," Helen yelled as a group of men came into the hall through the open front door. She grabbed her camera and shot out of the room.
One of the men broke from the group and came into the witness room saying loudly, "Who are you and what are you doing in here? This room is reserved."
"We were told this was a witness room and we are witnesses," said Roz, flatly. "Who are you?"
Glaring at Roz and throwing his entire body into an intimidating pose, the man said angrily, "I am the Academic Vice President, Henry Tarbuck, and I reserved this room for the university witnesses."
"That's OK then," said Roz cheerfully and completely unimpressed. "We are university witnesses."
Diana stepped forward. "Is there a problem?"
"Oh, it's you. You were supposed to go to a room upstairs."
"We asked and we were directed here," interjected Roz. Smiling up at Henry innocently, she continued in a child's sing-song voice, "finders, keepers."
"Well. We'll see about that," was the disgruntled, graceless retort.
As he turned to leave Trenchant stopped him. "I have requested an open hearing which you have denied me. I again ask that the hearing be open."
"No, absolutely not. The hearing is closed."
"A closed hearing is to protect the rights of the accused. As the accused, I waive that consideration and again request that the hearing be open and that any person who wishes may attend."
"No." The Vee closed the door of the witness room behind him with a indignant slam.
"Now there's a sweetheart," murmured Roz. "Hey, did you guys notice we got our own phone in here?"
An obviously annoyed Henry Tarbuck sought out the custodian, Lorraine. "I ordered that downstairs room to be held for the university's witnesses," he barked at her.
"Not me, you didn't. I was told to open two rooms for the hearing witnesses. That's all." Lorraine, all four feet of her bristling, stood up on her toes and duplicated the Vee's tone, jaw to jaw.
Always outmatched when encountering any female who did not smile, cringe, grovel or otherwise conform to his 'typing', Henry turned away from her and fumed his way to the hall phone booth.
Reaching his secretary, his tone took on the whine of a young boy. "Lynn, something terrible has happened. That woman took the good room, the one with the good chairs and the telephone. I'm using the booth in the hall! How could this happen?"
"I don't know, Henry. I told the custodian over there to reserve the two rooms as you directed me. I don't recall that you gave me specific instructions as to which room was for which group."
"I assumed th...."
Henry broke off as he caught sight of the dean and two medical school faculty coming in the door. "I'll get back to you and get this straightened out. Got to go.
"Right this way, gentlemen. We've had a slight mix up in the waiting rooms and I apologize in advance for any inconvenience it may cause. I'm going to have a phone put in soonest and some decent chairs!" Still talking, Henry led the men upstairs.
Downstairs, Helen returned from a self appointed scouting mission, breathless and amused. "Oh," she panted, "you should see the room they have. It's a lecture hall—hard chairs and blackboards all around. We sure lucked out by getting here first."
"We sure did but our luck was in having Lorraine as custodian in charge. Obviously, we were supposed to get the upstairs one and I'll bet you dollars to donuts that it's been bugged," asserted Roz.
Helen had recovered her breath by now and readily agreed. "Yeah, I bet. You know that Vee, Jimbo, was so threatening. I took his picture and he came right up to me and demanded to know my name and what I was doing there and...."
"Oh, he's a pain in the ass all the time," Roz interrupted. "He was bad enough when he was chair of NERD but now that they kicked him up to a Vee, he's insufferable. Drinks like a fish. Did you tell him?"
Helen laughed. "No, I just yelled, 'Press', at him and got the hell out of there.
"Just a moment ago, outside, I got a good shot of three guys that were just coming in. I think one of them was Dean Broadhurst. One of the guys with him saw me and covered his face—just like you see the crooks do on TV when they're taken to court."
James, the one male witness, came in with Jean and Andrea. They were laden with Dunkin' Donut bags, coffee cups, milk and soda.
It was well past the time set for the commencement of the hearing and the six women and one man good naturedly sat down to await the pleasure of the Vee. Noblesse oblige never had functioned at Belmont and they didn't expect it to start now.
Upstairs, things were gradually getting sorted out. Harried custodians had removed or stacked most of the student chairs and brought in plush seats. A phone had been located trailing a long, snake-like extension cord that stretched out the door and back along the hall to the office it had been liberated from.
The university caterers had brought in a coffee, tea and Danish service which was in the process of being depleted by the administration's witnesses. Henry Tarbuck worked the room, spreading ersatz charm like a bee pollinating from flower to flower.
The door to the hallway opened suddenly and Henry strode in. He looked at Diana Trenchant and gestured toward the hearing room. "We're ready for you now," he announced with all the smarmy triumph of an interrogator leading the way to the torture chamber.
The accused stood up. In silence, the seven witnesses grouped around hugging her and each other. The Vee watched, disgust thick as mildew around a neglected sauna, covering his face.
Disengaging, Trenchant started for the door.
"Here, take this with you just in case you lose your perspective and need to find it," urged James. He shoved an 8 x 10 inch piece of white cardboard into her hand.
On it, printed in large letters, was the legend: BEAM ME UP SCOTTY. THERE'S NO INTELLIGENT LIFE DOWN HERE!
The hearing room was about 30 feet square with no outside windows. The front, facing the hallway contained the door. The rest of the front wall was glass, similar to the neighboring witness room, but here the curtains were tightly closed as if the room was ashamed to reveal what was to take place inside.
A large table nearly filled the room, and seated along the far side of it, nearest the front of the room, sat four members of the hearing panel. At the head of the table, with his back to the blinded glass wall, Henry had enthroned himself.
Diana was curtly directed to a seat also on the far side of the table at the back of the room. There were several chairs between her and the panel.
Across the table from the panel sat Janet Parks, the court reporter, with her back to the door. She was accessorized with a recording machine beside her and a backup tape recorder on the table.
Janet, as her profession demanded, tended to fade into the woodwork. Dress and manner were subdued to the point where she became nearly invisible—but not to Diana. She saw kindly eyes surrounded by a round face that wanted to be jolly and laughing. She saw a possible relief from the dominant accusing eyes. Not an advocate perhaps, but at least neutrality.
An empty chair sat drawn up to the table beside Janet and there was another empty chair further down the table opposite Trenchant.
The entire setup of the room was intentionally choreographed to promote psychological terrorism. Diana Trenchant and her witnesses would be interrogated by the panel while sitting in the chair beside the court stenographer directly across from the panel.
The administration's accusers would sit in the chair which was directly across the table from Diana Trenchant. Except for when she would be testifying, Diana was seated at the place most distant from the door.
Alone.
Diana Trenchant sat down in the assigned seat and arranged her note pad and documents for easy access. For the moment, the panel was huddled together whispering so she took the time to organize her thoughts and chill out the mounting apprehension.
Here she was, sixty years old, twenty five of those working at Belmont, with never even as much as a traffic ticket citation, facing a university hearing panel. Here she was—accused of forging seven student feedback forms. The lump in her stomach and the one in her throat were trying to join together and drag the rest of her down into a black, empty tunnel of fear. Resisting the pull, she looked around the hearing room and met the eyes of the stenographer who smiled at her encouragingly.
Janet Parks had attended many hearings. Her job was to faithfully record every spoken word on her transcription machine. Most of the time, she plied her trade in the courts but occasionally she was called out into the private sector. She had seen a lot of people on trial and her observant eyes took in every detail.
The configuration of the hearing room had not been lost on her so when she met the eyes of the accused, Diana Trenchant, she felt a tug of sympathy. She noted Diana's pale, drawn features and erect bearing. Here was a woman, thought Janet, who would never use makeup or any other cover up. She has such a direct, honest look it's hard to believe that she is the one in trouble here. As Diana's eyes returned to her notes, Janet looked at her more closely. Not terribly well groomed, she thought, noting the slacks with casual blouse and jacket. Janet recalled that Diana was wearing jogging shoes when she walked in. Obviously, she wore her cloths for comfort, not for adornment. Janet continued her inventory: mousy brown hair—no style, blue eyes. Tired blue eyes. Lots of wrinkles, those badges that life awarded to survivors. Must be pushing along into the sixties. Wonder what she sounds like. Hope she's not one of those squeaky kind. Oh, oh, the head cheese is about to start—get ready.
Henry Tarbuck consulting his notes then stated that the dean had accused Diana Trenchant of creating and submitting fictitious student feedback forms.
"Responding to the dean's charge, this committee was formed and I will now introduce them. On the end is Mr. Frank Anuse, director of the Informational Studies Unit."
The Vee looked fondly at Frank who nodded his bald head in acknowledgement. A tall gangling bean-pole of a man. His head, devoid of any sort of demarcation between face and pate, appeared to float above his body like some sort of alien spacecraft.
They had gotten together over drinks the day before and decided that they would play good cop, bad cop at the hearing. He, as chair, would affect neutrality while Frank could go after Diana and her witnesses hammer and tongs.
If anyone on this hearing panel was more anxious than himself to smash this woman, it was Frank, mused Henry. He had good reason. It was about three years ago that....
Affirmative Action Officer, Kevin Goodman, sat in his office reading a letter that had just come in the campus mail.
Kevin, a black, realized that he had been awarded this position because of his permanent tan. He had thought when he agreed to take the office that he truly would be allowed to enforce federal mandates.
Now, two years into it, the bubble had long since burst. His office was there, it appeared, only to satisfy the law that such an office be maintained. However, deans and directors of departments seldom did as he directed and if he went to the Pope, well, he found out pretty quickly that did no good.
He was actively seeking another appointment at a more enlightened and humane university. Enough was enough, but while he was still here, he would do the best he could or was allowed to do.
He smoothed the pages of the letter flat and reached for the phone.
"Professor Anuse? Kevin Goodman here. Affirmative Action Office."
"Yes. What can I do for you?"
"I have a complaint regarding your hiring process that I'd like to discuss with you at your earliest convenience."
"Now's fine. What's the problem?"
"It's alleged that you will not interview or otherwise consider males for positions in your division," Kevin said, carefully.
"Can't interview or consider anyone who doesn't apply for a position, can I. Shit! Men just aren't interested in the jobs in my unit."
Kevin blinked and cleared his throat. "Ah, well, I called the personnel office and they informed me that they had sent you a file of a male for the last two positions you posted. I was told that you did not interview him."
"Could be, I suppose. Probably he didn't qualify."
"Personnel says that he is very well qualified."
Frank Anuse made a face at the telephone. The supercilious bastard, he thought. Who is he to check up on my hiring?
"They do, huh."
Frank's predilection for hiring only women, preferably young, was well known throughout Belmont. He laughingly referred to himself as the sheik and the girls as his harem in conversations with his male colleagues. His girls referred to him as Jack the Ripper. Turnover in his department, in all senses of the word, was active.
"Yes," Kevin continued. "In light of this complaint, my office will have to review the records of all of your hiring for the past two years. Would you please have this material ready for my assistant to pick up tomorrow?" Kevin spoke firmly, looking down at his crossed fingers.
"All those files? Christ, you think I've got nothing better to do than.... Who in the hell made this complaint, anyway?"
"The letter came from the chair of the Staff Association, Diana Trenchant. Evidently several complaints have been brought to her attention."
"She can go to Hell and you too, for that matter. What business is it of yours who I hire?"
"Federal law prohibits discriminatory hiring practices. This university has to comply to receive federal grants. My job is to see that the university is in compliance."
"Bull, everyone knows that just applies to women and spa...., er, minorities."
"That is incorrect, Mr. Anuse. Anti-discrimination laws apply to anyone who is being discriminated against. Please have those files ready for pick-up," said Kevin and firmly hung up the phone.
Frank looked at the phone for a beat and then walloped it to get a dial tone. He punched in the number for Mark Rogers, the university attorney.
Reaching his party, he said, "Mark, what do you know about the bitch chairing the Staff Association?"
...."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!
"Now what did you do with these SmurFFs that Dr Fecesi brought you?" questioned Henry.
"At first, I just thought about them. Then I took them to Jimbo Jones who was chair of the department before me.
"I thought he might have some idea of what should be done and he, of course, knew Trenchant since she had been in the department during his tenure as chair."
Lyle continued, shifting in his chair so he appeared taller. "Jimbo immediately took them to Mark Rogers who is the university attorney and Mark sent them out for analysis.
"I looked through other SmurFFs and picked out a couple that seemed strange, that didn't seem to me to be what students would write, and Jimbo found a couple in the nursing course and all those were sent out to the examiner.
"The document examiners reported that, to the best of their knowledge, Trenchant had written the SmurFFs we had sent them so I went to you, Henry, to the administration, and it was decided that I meet with her and give her an opportunity to resign. When she refused, I wrote the dean and he initiated the termination for cause action."
Henry appeared pleased, consulted his notes and asked if Lyle could explain Trenchant's conduct.
Certainly, Lyle would be happy to. His eagerness to answer this question lent strength to a skeletal system already overtaxed with maintaining a taller posture.
"It had to do with the problems in the radiology course. Ian and Randy were trying to make the course better. She fought them on everything and finally she quit the course—said it was too much along with her other teaching responsibilities. It was about a year ago that...."
Randy called another meeting to discuss the Radiology course changes. Ian attended reluctantly. He was not convinced but Randy swept him along and Randy had Lyle's approval. All Ian had was a poor track record teaching the course.
Randy delineated the changes he was going to make in the manual. The first one was that Trenchant's name would not appear on it. Instead, it would be the product of the course directors, Ian and Randy.
He was quietly and firmly told by Trenchant that he did not have her permission to make any changes. The manual was copyrighted by her and would stay that way. He had the option to either use it or not, but he could not change it as he was indicating. As for legitimate suggestions or ideas, she would certainly, as always, welcome constructive criticism and make the necessary changes herself.
This was not an arbitrary determination by Trenchant. Her manual was written expressly to teach a circumscribed area of the course. It did not pretend to be otherwise. Even though more emphasis was to be given to recent developments in the field, the radiology course must still devote a great deal of time to the basics. This was because the students had to be prepared for the courses to follow.
Randy announced that he would use what he wanted, as he wanted and the meeting broke up.
The accused was busy in her office when Lyle burst through the door in his customary manner of no manners.
"What do you mean telling Randy and Ian that they could not use the manual and make the changes they want in it?" He yelled at her, continuing with threats of what would or might happen if she didn't do as she was directed.
When Trenchant was finally given a chance to answer, she told him simply that the manual was copyrighted and that she had told Ian and Randy that they were free to use it or not as they chose. They were not to edit it or change the authorship, however.
When his browbeating failed to move her, he left. Within the hour, Jimbo accosted her in much the same manner.
Becoming a Vee had not changed Jimbo. He was still unable or unwilling to govern his temper.
"You cannot claim copyright to the radiology manual because it is illegal and the university will sue you and put you in jail."
After he had stopped yelling, Trenchant told him the same thing she had told the others.
He left and went into Lyle's office where they were joined by Ian and Randy.
It was decided that they would retype the radiology manual using as much of it as they wanted. "To hell with that trouble-making broad," was the decision of the assistant vice president for academic affairs of Belmont University. This was done. Without permission, they used large portions of the manual in the fall radiology course, giving no credit to its author.
Diana was not the only author so honored. In the manual, and in other material that these men put together to teach the radiology course, complete excerpts were taken verbatim from four standard radiology texts. No source was cited. No author was credited. Also, an entire atlas on radiology was photographed. Several copies of these photographs were made and put out in the lab with absolutely no credit given to its authors or publisher.
At least one medical student was incensed by this. He or she wrote to the publisher anonymously.
The accused learned through the student grapevine that the department got into serious trouble because of this and that Dean Broadhurst was furious.
Lyle blamed Trenchant for blowing the whistle, conveniently forgetting that it was a student who had written the letters.
Lyle droned on and on with a litany of sins attributed to Diana Trenchant, carefully circling the truth. "Whatever problem the department had, she was usually responsible," he asserted. The folds of paper falling from the court stenographer's machine stacked higher and higher. Janet was beginning to look very tired.
The 'suspect SmurFFs' were introduced and Lyle identified them. "Yes," he intoned, "When I spoke to Trenchant and told her she had the option to resign and nothing further would be said or done to her, I gave her all of the handwriting evidence, all of these SmurFFs, at that time."
Now, Henry allowed questions from the rest of the committee who started to slowly wake up after enduring Lyle's long and repetitious testimony. Nearly 20 minutes was spent answering their inane questions regarding how many courses were involved and who found the 'suspect' critiques. Most of their questions had been answered previously in the material given them—the dean's letter and Lyle's memo.
Esther, however, alertly noticed that some of the SmurFFs in question had no dates and inquired how these could be said to come from a certain year.
The answer given was a model of obfuscation. Lyle replied, "The critiques from those two years came in a packet to me from Randy and Ian. Those were the years that Trenchant was indeed involved in teaching this course."
Satisfied with the answer apparently, Esther questioned why one of the suspect SmurFFs had a note stapled to it.
Diana sat up in her chair. This was a question she wanted answered.
Lyle replied that it was a note from Trenchant and that he had stapled it to the evaluation prior to sending it off to the handwriting analyst.
None of them questioned why a note in Trenchant's handwriting was made a part of the document that the analysts were to analyze for authorship.
Annette wondered if she understood correctly. Did Lyle say that he kept all of the critiques in his office?
When Lyle answered yes, she asked how it would be possible for Diana to submit falsified ones.
The silence in the room was deafening. Janet, lifting her hands from the keys, massaged her fingers, the suggestion of a smile floated mischievously over her face.
Panel member Anuse finally came to the rescue with a cuing question and a long discussion ensued as to how SmurFFs were handled in the department and what happened to them.
Many of the answers give by Lyle were false. Diana made a note of these.
The chair now looked expectantly at Professor Jane Astori. So far things had gone very well. Everyone had been on cue and except for those two surprise questions....well, they were fielded quite adeptly. His chest expanded with pride in his ability to bring this thing to a smooth conclusion. Now it was time for Jane to ask the questions that would delineate the magnitude of this crime. That would certainly figure in the Attorney General's evaluation of the hearing.
"Since all of the comments on the suspect SmurFFs refer to Randy," Jane began, "I'd like the details of how this could impact on Ian."
Well, Jane had come through all right. A little too direct for comfort but then, she hadn't the gift of subtlety that he, Henry, had acquired. At any rate, Lyle was well prepared and the gates opened and the Ian story poured forth. How hard he had worked at the course. What it had cost him in research time and time away from loved ones.
In answer to further questions from Jane, he covered everything. All the trips to the dean's office in Ian's behalf. He emphasized that the disparaging student critiques suddenly got better when Trenchant was no longer in the course.
Over and over, he stressed that it was all the faultfinding SmurFFs that were coming in that were the problem. What was the reason for it?
He, Lyle, felt that Ian was doing a fine job. Well, the situation had caused them many a sleepless night. And on and on....
Several times Jane tried with her questions to bring Lyle back to saying how the SmurFFs in question, the ones he thought Diana had written, hurt Ian. Henry had impressed on her that it was important that Lyle be given the opportunity to link the harm caused by Trenchant to Ian as well as Randy.
Whatever the reason, Lyle was acting awfully dense, she thought, or else he thinks it's vital to get all this other stuff in first. I've certainly given him the question often enough, let someone else try. She put down her notes, leaned back in her chair and nodded to Henry that she was finished.
Frank Anuse took over the questioning. He wanted to know the reason that Ian's SmurFFs got better when Trenchant was not in the course.
"Well, you see, these suspect SmurFFs in those packets there, these few are just the tip of the iceberg. Diana Trenchant, during the years she was in the course, influenced the students to write bad evaluations about Randy and Ian."
There it was. Stark and real. Diana was not just accused of creating SmurFFs—she was accused of witchcraft.
Jane jerked upright in her chair and stared at Lyle aghast. Was he really accusing Diana of that level of control over medical students? Preposterous—one woman, all by herself, had influenced hundreds of medical students over a period of years to do as she dictated. There's more to this than I've been told.... this isn't about forging seven SmurFFs. What on earth is going on here, she pondered....
Finally, Henry noticed Janet who had been trying to get his attention for some time. "We'll take a ten minute recess and when we come back, Trenchant may cross examine Dr. Stone. You may leave the room. I'll summon you when we are ready," he ordered, taking in Janet and Diana with the same disdainful glance.
The committee huddled and Lyle Stone joined them. So much for impartiality.
Janet and Diana left, both breathing an audible sigh of relief as the door shut behind them. Stopping at the soft drink dispenser, the court reporter glanced around carefully then said sotto voce, "What a farce. Unbelievable."
The ten-minute break had stretched to twenty before Henry and the panel finished going over their notes to make sure they had brought out everything that Mark, the university attorney, had advised.
Diana and Janet were called back and Diana began the cross examination of her department chair, Lyle Stone.
She asked him first to confirm a sentence written in his memo to the dean and which he had testified to before the break.
"Yes," Lyle answered, "I did write in the memo to the dean and also testified that I gave you all of the documents used in the handwriting analysis."
Diana held up several sheets of paper from the evidence packet on the table. "I have found documents dated nearly twenty years ago in this material the committee has introduced as that sent to the document examiners. These were not in the material that you gave me. So your assertion that I was given all of the documents is incorrect."
Henry searched quickly through his copy of the evidence that had been sent to the document examiners as standards. Good God, he thought. What is this creature doing? Come on Lyle, don't let her get the best of you.
Ah, much better, Henry observed happily to himself as Lyle started tap dancing around her question. Instead of yes or no, he would repeat at length some of his previous testimony with added embellishments and avoid answering.
By persistent questioning, Diana established that he had stapled her brief note to one of the 'suspect' SmurFFs before it was sent out for analysis. But it was like pulling teeth. He kept reiterating that it was stapled to a 'suspect' evaluation, so it would not get lost.
Patiently, she repeated her question, finally wearing him down. "Were the document examiners given this evaluation with the note stapled on it as one of the 'fictitious' critiques?"
"Yes, they identified that critique as having been written by you."
"No distinction between the note and the critique was given them—according to their report, is that correct?"
"I guess so, yes."
Using a sketch of the NERD office, Trenchant ran Lyle back through his previous testimony of how the blank critiques, the SmurFFs, were given out, how they were collected and what happened to them afterwards.
From her intimate knowledge of the operation, she was able to reveal most of the lies he had told of this process when the committee was questioning him.
Jane was listening carefully. Slowly, there evolved the information that this whole evaluation process was sloppy and unreliable. That it had indeed, been this way for years. Given that, she thought, how could he claim that such a high reliance was put on SmurFFs when assessing faculty for reappointment?
Lyle admitted that students had scant desire to complete SmurFFs. They considered it a useless effort since little or no attention had been paid in the past to their comments.
"To force compliance," he explained, "students were told that unless their name had been checked off on a list in the secretaries' office, they could not receive their grade for the course from the dean's office. Most students bring in completed evaluation forms, place them in the box provided and check off their names. Some merely come in and check off their names, eschewing the forms," he finally admitted with obvious reluctance.