Mind Change
Page 6
He thought for a time, then pursed his lips and said, quietly:
“Let’s go to my place and get a cup of coffee. Then let’s go see Adam Marsh.”
“Who’s Adam Marsh, Rick?”
“He’s a lawyer in town, and an old hunting buddy of mine. We shoot doves together. He has an office just off Main Street. Come on. Like I say, we’ll have coffee at my place for fifteen minutes or so. Then we’ll see what we can find out from Adam. Maybe a lawyer can tell us whether she really has the power to fire these people, or whether they can sue her. Or whatever else he might know.”
They began walking.
And the same disturbing feelings began to rise in Nina.
It was easy being with this man.
Too easy.
It remained too easy as they approached his two-story frame house which, as he explained, was the one he grew up in.
It remained too easy as she threw herself on his battered couch and let her shoes fall onto his shag carpet.
It remained too easy as she sipped coffee and, thinking of the fate of her friend Lucinda, asked him:
“Rick, what’s going to happen at this board meeting?”
He shrugged.
“There’s only one thing that can happen. Once they find out what Herndon has done, they’ll have to fire her. Immediately.”
“But what will they do after that? Apologize to the faculty? And the administration?”
“I don’t know, Nina.”
“And are the faculty actually fired? I mean, just because Lucinda told them they were?”
“I don’t know that, either. Just like I don’t know what the board is going to say to the three thousand or so newspapers around the country that are just now getting, and running, the story. I don’t know what the faculty is doing in this emergency meeting that they’re supposed to be having now. I don’t know what the students are doing, other than celebrating.”
“There’s one good thing about this, Rick.”
“What?”
“It’s your story. You’re now famous.”
“Yes. The most insane cock and bull story to come over the wires since—well, since what? What in all of history has happened that’s anywhere as unutterably stupid as this?”
“World War II?”
“That made perfect sense, compared to this. And it didn’t affect nearly so many people. Okay, so a few Frenchmen got upset when Hitler marched into Paris. But that’s nothing compared to what the entire faculty and staff must be feeling now. No, it’s all just stupid. And I get credit for writing it.”
“Still, maybe you’ll win a Pulitzer Prize.”
“If I don’t get locked up first. If Lucinda doesn’t get locked up.”
“That’s not really funny, you know.”
“I know, Nina. I know. But, come on, we’ve got to time this right. We just have time now to get some info from Adam, then get over to the board meeting.”
She put the coffee cup away and slipped her shoes back on.
Why is this man so easy to talk to? she asked herself.
It was the chain of crazy events that were whirling around them.
Anybody would be easy to talk to, given all these insane goings on.
That’s why he’s so easy to talk to.
She followed Rick to the door of the house.
Somehow though, she knew she would be back.
Adam Marsh’s law office was a fifteen-minute walk, and Nina, legs much shorter than the man she was trying to keep up with, was out of breath when the two of them arrived.
They sat in a crowded waiting room for a short time, but then the door opened and Adam Marsh came out to meet them.
“Rick, come in. Haven’t seen you in a while.”
“Hey Adam! This is Nina Bannister.
“Nice to meet you, Ms. Bannister!”
“Same here.”
“Sit down, both of you.”
They did.
Marsh’s full beard was completely white, but he was still an athletic-looking man, although he walked with a pronounced limp
“Sorry I can’t give you much time. It’s chaos in here. As I guess you understand. Now come on and tell me: what the hell is going on at the university?”
“I don’t know.”
“But you wrote the story!”
“You think that means I know something?”
“We’ve had fifteen calls from faculty and staff in the last hour asking if they can sue somebody.”
“Can they?”
“Sure. You can sue anybody.”
“Can they win?”
“That depends. It might help me to know what the sam hill is going on!”
“The president fired the faculty.”
“The whole faculty?”
“Yep.”
“Just like that?”
“Just like that.”
“Oh, my God.”
“Lot of people are saying that.”
“Who else did she fire?”
“Administration.”
“How many?”
“All.”
“What?”
“All.”
“Every administrator? She fired every administrator?”
“Yes, she did. I heard her do it; I read the letters.”
“I’ll be goddamned! How many people is that?”
“Twelve hundred and sixty three.”
“I’m going to need a drink.”
“Better get one quick. The liquor stores will be running out.”
“So––how are you two involved in all this?”
“Nina’s a good friend of hers and smart as a whip. On the other hand, I barely know her and I’m dumb as dirt. So go figure.”
“What’s happened to her, Rick? Has she gone nuts?”
“Seems fine to me.”
“You can’t just up and fire twelve hundred people—just like that!”
“That’s kind of why I’m here.”
“What’s kind of why you’re here?”
“Can she?”
“Can she what?”
“Can she fire twelve hundred people? I mean, legally?”
He paused.
“You’re not going to quote me, are you?”
“Not unless you need the business.”
He gestured to the waiting room, which now looked like a supermarket.
“Does it look like I need the business?”
“Okay, so off the record.”
“All right then. Legally, she can do any damn thing she wants.”
“Even to the tenured professors?”
“Tenure,” he said, “has no standing in federal or state courts. It’s a purely academic matter. Any professor––any administrator––can be fired for cause. The myth that professors have complete job security is just that––it’s a myth.”
“So what happens if a tenured professor gets fired?”
“A lot of other professors get mad. And that’s it.”
“What can they do?”
“Well––” he shrugged.
“––the most damaging thing that they can do, as far as I know, is join together with other professors, and revoke the institution’s accreditation. But you’re talking academic nonsense now and it’s far removed from the normal nonsense I deal with.”
“So what are you going to do with all these people wanting to sue the university?”
“I’m going to take their names and addresses, and tell them to go home. Then I’m going to get drunk.”
“Like I say––better get to it.”
When Rick and Nina left the office, more cars were arriving, and the crowd was spilling out onto the sidewalk.
CHAPTER FIVE: THE BOARD
Half an hour later, they were in the board room, listening to the chairperson—whose name was Barbara Richardson––as she spoke to Lucinda Herndon about the impossibility of outsiders—them, that is, Nina and Rick—attending the meeting.
“You must realize that the events
of the last hours have shocked us all, and that it is of the utmost urgency that we meet in private about this.”
“I’m going to give a statement to Mr. Barnes,” answered Lucinda Herndon. “He and I will go outside, and I can give it to him now. Or he can stay here, and I’ll give it to all of you. You decide.”
“Lucinda––”
“Come on then,” the president said, rising, and looking at Rick and Nina, “This won’t take long.”
“No!”
Three people on the board said, “No” simultaneously.
“Lucinda, I beg you to be very cautious here. What you’ve done is––I don’t know. Just––”
The chairwoman looked at Rick.
“Can we at least ask you, Mr. Barnes, to be discreet in what you write?”
“No,” he answered. “I have to write the truth. It may be discreet; it may be indiscreet. But whatever it is, I have to write it.”
There was silence in the room.
Finally, Barbara Richardson:
“All right. Then let the board meeting come to order. I, as I’m sure you all know, am Barbara Richardson, CEO of Adorn Cosmetics, based in Vicksburg. Lucinda, the floor is yours.”
“Good,” answered the president, rising.
She walked to the door of the room, opened it, and beckoned.
“You can bring these in now.”
Several students appeared as though by magic, each carrying a large, black, cardboard box.
“Take them over there, to the end of the room. Put them behind the podium. And be sure there is chalk on the blackboard rail.
All of these things were done.
Lucinda Herndon then made her way––with some difficulty, since the chairs were close to the wall––to the front of the room. She stood behind the podium and tapped on the microphone. It was clearly off.
“Rick, Nina, can you hear me in the back of the room?”
They nodded.
“Good. Then we won’t need the microphone.”
And she began.
“At nine o’clock this morning, I personally fired the full-time faculty of this university. Nine hundred and eighty-six people were dismissed, including instructors, assistant professors, associate professors, and full professors. By mail, I informed three hundred and twenty-one administrators, including provosts, deans, vice presidents, etc., that their services were no longer required.”
There was an audible gasp in the room.
“So. Are there any questions?”
Pause.
Barbara Richardson:
“Lucinda—you––you know you can’t do this.”
“It’s done.”
“No, but––but you simply can’t.”
“I have.”
“But––but why?”
“Because they’re useless. They’re all useless.”
“Is this a joke?”
“It was. It’s going to cease to be. The joke is over. We can’t afford it anymore.”
“Lucinda, what are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about this. Here. Please pass copies of this article around.”
She reached into one of the open black boxes beside the podium and pulled out several stapled copies of what was clearly an academic article of some sort. The Board, Nina found herself thinking, reacted like a class of dutiful college students as the papers were passed around.
“Does everyone have a copy?”
Everyone in the room nodded.
“Very well. I’m going to read aloud.”
She read the following:
“The conclusion Bersani draws from this aesthetic desire to present the ruins of meaning is neither historicizing nor culturally prognostic. He explains the immobilized act of the consumption of art as a form of libidinal investment. Since one of the effects of being aesthetically immobilized is a sudden feeling of self-containment, the rhetors of impoverished art all experience their immersion into themselves. They adopt libidinal investment of egos that enjoy the situation when signification collapses. Because this situation revives the moment of narcissistic self-containment that once dominated the ontogenetic period before the acquisition of language, the driving force behind both comprehension and reception is simply a suspension of signification. The degree zero then is the form of art not entirely taken either by its questioning the authority or by being preoccupied by its own breakdown.”
There was silence for a time.
“That,” she went on, “is part of a book written by one of our full professors of English, Dr. Charles Altieri. The book’s title is Aesthetics and Politics in the Work of Pierre Bourdieu. Now––”
She looked at Rick:
“Mr. Barnes?”
“Yes?”
“How many people write full-time for The Gazette?”
“Fourteen.”
“Who is the best of them?”
“I am.”
“What do you make of the prose I just read to you?”
“Gibberish.”
“Thank you, dear. Actually, it’s post-structuralism. What would The Gazette pay for it?”
“Nothing.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s gibberish.”
“Do you know what we paid for it, dear?”
“No.”
“Anybody? Anyone want to know what we paid for a book of this?”
Silence.
“One hundred and three thousand dollars.”
There was another gasp, and a voice from the far end of the table could be heard whispering:
“Damn.”
Then Lucinda Herndon once again:
“This is not counting Professor Altieri’s travel expenses, of course, both to Corsica, where he lived––at our expense––while writing the book, and Rome, where he attended three conferences, during which various chapters of the book were given as papers. Professor Altieri taught no classes for us during that time, since he was on sabbatical.
The same voice again:
“Damn.”
Lucinda Herndon leaned forward on the podium.
And then she screamed:
“I’m sick of this, and you should be too! We’re all being robbed!”
Then she rocked back on her feet, stood straight, and simply glared at every single face sitting around the table.
No one said a thing.
All Nina could hear was the faint tapping of Rick’s app, as he wrote what was being said.
And she knew, sending it directly to the newspaper.
Which, she also knew, would send it directly to every other paper in the country.
Lucinda Herndon, having successfully cowed everyone in the room, simply began to go through the articles that had been piled in the box nearest to her.
‘“Romance, Sleep, and the Errors of the Rhyming Poem, by Arcadno’. No one has ever taught ‘The Rhyming Poem.’ Not at this university. Not at any university.”
‘“Sir Orfeo’s Kunstkammer’. No one has ever taught ‘Sir Orfeo’s Kunstkammer’ at this university. Nor at any university.”
‘“The Wallace Manuscript of the Siege at San Quentin.’ No one at this university has ever taught, or heard of, ‘The Wallace Manuscript’.”
“How much did that article cost us?” asked someone.
“Sixty-eight thousand dollars. Dr. Silverberg wrote it. Along with three other articles. That is all he did last year. We paid him two hundred and four thousand dollars.”
“And that’s all he wrote?”
“No, Dr. Silverberg ranges out. He writes ‘Copia Verborum,’ and ‘Milton in the Age of Fish.’”
“In the age of what?”
“Fish.”
“Do you mean, like, real fish or––”
“I don’t know.”
Silence.
Then:
“That, ladies and gentlemen, is called ‘Literary Research.’ ‘Literary Research’ means that our faculty write things that no one else has said. This means that they are
‘expanding the limits of the field.’ The problem is that nothing they write has any relevance to the lives of our students. Or to the students’ parents. Or anyone else. Here: let’s pass on to the sciences. Dr. Orbison, on his work as a biologist:
“My research interests lie in the morphology of bryophytes. I’m currently conducting an investigation of the development of the cystolemic apparatus, as well as patterns of microtubules and micro fibulae, which are studied by techniques of immunofluorescence and transmitive microscopy.”
“We pay,” she continued, “eighty four thousand dollars a year for this research. Going on, here is Dr. Holliday on his research, also in biology:”
“My primary interests lie in the physiomorphology of decapods, especially burrowing thalassinoids. Special interest lies in osmoregulatory abilities and trophic ontogeny in the pineads. This work is carried out chiefly in Mexico, the Bahamas, Colombia, and the Cayman Islands.”
A voice came from somewhere in the room:
“What do we pay for that?”
“We pay Dr. Holliday seventy-seven thousand dollars a year for that. Of course, some of that covers his travel expenses.”
“What are burrowing thalassioids?”
“Shrimp.”
“We pay him all that money to study shrimp?”
“Extinct shrimp.”
“Pardon me?”
“The shrimp he studies are extinct. He’s trying to find out why.”
“My God.”
Nina, despite herself, could not help whispering to Rick:
“Pulitzer.”
But he simply continued to type.
And the president continued to speak.
“These are faculty, of course. Very few of them teach more than two courses per semester. Now to the administrators. The people without whom this magnificent university could not operate. I will not read their ‘research interests,’ because they have none. I will not talk about their teaching, as they do not teach. I will simply list the administrators who are currently being paid more than eighty thousand dollars per year, some of them much more.
The Provost.
The Vice Provost.
The Vice President for Administration and Finance.
The Executive Assistant to the Vice President for Administration and Finance.
The Assistant Vice President for Financial Services.
The Assistant Vice President for Administrative Services.