Mind Change

by T'Gracie Reese

  For a time Nina knew nothing to say. Then:

  “I’m very moved, Lucinda, that you think of me that way. But I just––”

  “I know. It seems frightening. But don’t worry. The worst is in the past.”

  Peter Stockton smiled:

  “I believe she’s right, Ms. Bannister. Now you may not believe this to look at me––rough old cowhand that I am––but I was once a student here. Lucinda’s husband was my history teacher. I loved history. And do you know what Machiavelli said was the hardest thing for a Prince to do?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “To change the order of things.”

  “Peter,” said the President, “was one of my husband’s best students.”

  “And he was a great history teacher,” said Peter Stockton. “He made it come alive.”

  “He had talked with you about going to graduate school.”

  “Almost did, but other things got in the way. Maggie was pregnant, and the oil thing presented itself. One thing led to another––”

  “––and you got rich.”

  He smiled.

  “I got fortunate.”

  “That’s one way to look at it, I suppose, but––oh, here’s Barbara!”

  And they were, in fact, joined in the snack bar by Barbara Richardson, who looked as out of place among vinyl chairs as she would have among paper plates or cheap shirts. She pulled a chair up, looked at it distrustfully, and sat down in it.

  “Barbara!” exclaimed the President. “Please have some coffee. It’s a dollar and a quarter, but, I’m sure, if we all put our change together––oh, and by the way, Barbara, I love your tan!”

  Barbara Richardson managed a half smile.

  “Vacation time in the Azores. It’s one of the perks of never having been married—except to one’s work. I don’t have a husband to lug around. But to more important things: Lucinda, the Board has decided not to take action against you at this time.”

  “Wonderful! How good of them!”

  “They have asked me to put certain questions to you––for our own information, you understand.”

  “Of course.”

  “Then, from a practical standpoint, Lucinda, how are our classes going to be taught? The semester begins this coming Wednesday!”

  “We’ll hire new teachers. Better ones.”

  “How are you going to find these people? And when?”

  “I’m going to hire them this afternoon. By…what time is it now?”

  “Ten thirty.”

  “By one o’clock, the contracts will have been signed.”

  “By whom?”

  “Good teachers.”

  “I just––”

  “Trust me.”

  “But what about the administrators?”

  “One fifteen.”

  “What?”

  “The administrators will have been replaced by one fifteen.”

  “Lucinda, we’re going to get sued! Massively, collectively, sued!”

  “No Barbara, we should have been sued in the past, for swindling honest people out of literally billions of dollars. If we could survive being criminals for decades, we can certainly survive being honest for a few hours.”

  “All right. Mr. Stockton?”

  “Yes, Ms. Richardson?”

  “The Board wishes to convey to you their thanks for your upcoming donation.”

  “You tell them it’s my pleasure.”

  “The donation did not, of course, contribute to our final decision.”

  “Of course not. My understanding then is that President Herndon is not fired?”

  “That’s true. The Board is simply not taking action.”

  “When might the Board take action?”

  “I don’t know. Our next meeting is in October.”

  “So, essentially, if this thing works, you’re going to say you were with her all along; and if it blows up in our faces and she really is crazy, you’re going to fire her ass.”

  “I really can’t––”

  “That’s the best we can expect,” said Stockton. “By October, Lucinda, you’ll have the land and I’ll be putting up the buildings. If they fire you, you can damn sure come to work for me!”

  “Can I,” asked Rick, leaning forward over the ketchup and mustard jars, “have a statement for The Gazette?”

  “Yes,” said Barbara Richardson, taking out a sheet a paper: Please write, ‘Although the Board of Regents regrets any inconvenience and temporary personal difficulty caused by the present necessary downsizing, we wish to assure all of the university’s continued commitment to excellence in higher education.’”

  “That’s it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay. I’m sending it now.”

  And he did.

  “Well,” said Peter Stockton, standing up, “I have a good deal of business to get to. I’m excited. I like building things.”

  “I must go also,” said the Chairperson, dusting herself off as well as possible.

  Lucinda Herndon turned in her chair and looked at Nina and Rick:

  “Mr. Barnes, I believe you know where the Old Gymnasium is?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why don’t you meet me there in fifteen minutes? There will be another meeting, and you may wish to add to your developing story.”

  “What meeting is it?”

  “Let it be a surprise. Just be there, and be ready to write. Nina, the meeting will be important for you, too. It will, I hope, affect your future. So––good by for now, but I’ll see both of you in little more than an hour.”

  And, so saying, she left them.

  They sat, as though stunned, for what seemed a great deal of time but probably was not.

  Then Rick looked up, as though glimpsing a vision in the sky.

  “Omigod.”

  “What is it, Rick?”

  Only then did she notice the large television screen above and behind her.

  “That’s the faculty!”

  “Where?”

  “There. On TV.”

  And it was.

  It was the big game hunter professor whom she had noticed before, who had introduced Lucinda Herndon to the faculty––now standing in front of a podium, preparing to read a statement.

  “What do you think they’re going to do, Rick?”

  He shrugged.

  “Dunno.”

  “Will they go on strike?”

  “They can’t go on strike; they’re fired. They don’t have anything to strike from. They don’t––”

  But he was interrupted by the professor on the screen beginning to speak:

  “The Faculty has just emerged from a lengthy discussion of events that have only recently transpired. I am authorized to say that we, as a faculty, are united in expressing our deep concern. That is all that I can say at this time.”

  And he walked away from the podium.

  “They didn’t do anything,” said Nina.

  “No, they didn’t.”

  Rick’s cell phone whirred:

  “Hey, Barnes here.”

  “This is Penn Robinson.”

  “What’s up, boss?”

  “You’re doing great! There are stories going out all over the country—hell, all over the world—with your name attached. And, of course, with ours. Some of the stuff is damned good, too. I didn’t know you could write that well.”

  “Thanks.”

  “So you’re telling me that the Board is actually supporting this?”

  “No. But they’re not ‘not supporting it.’ They had the choice of firing Herndon or giving away––oh, three or four hundred million dollars. And they had to make that choice right in front of me and the world. And so, decisive people that they are, they decided it might be better just to go to tonight’s cocktail party, and see which way the wind blows.”

  “And the university just got fifty acres of land?”

  “Yes.”

  “And enough buildings for ten thousand new
students?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where are these students going to come from?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “And the university has gotten all these things because?”

  “Because they fired the faculty and administration.”

  “We’re all going crazy.”

  “Roger that, boss.”

  “Did you see the faculty announcement on TV?”

  “Yeah, Nina and I just saw it.”

  “They didn’t do anything!”

  “No, they didn’t.”

  “Okay, I want you to hook up with Sanderson. He just finished covering the faculty meeting. I want him to get his story to you so you can wire it to AP.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Where are you?”

  “We’re at the student center now.”

  “Where are you going next?”

  “Old gym. There’s another meeting of some kind that the president wants me to cover.”

  “What meeting?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “Okay, I’ll call Sanderson. He’ll meet you in front of the gym.”

  “Got it.”

  Cell phone shut.

  It took them five minutes to reach what Nina assumed was the old gym, and at that point, they were approached by a tall sandy-haired reporter, whom she soon learned was Sanderson.

  He ran to meet them. He had a kind of wild-eyed look about him, she thought, as though he’d covered both the Hindenburg disaster and the sinking of the Lusitania in the same day––one in the morning after breakfast, the other in the afternoon before tea.

  “You’re not going to believe it!” he said.

  “We haven’t believed anything about any of this yet; why start now? By the way, this is Nina Bannister, who, we’ve just learned, is the inspiration behind all of this.”

  “Pleased to meet you,” said Sanderson. “What the hell did you start?”

  “I didn’t know,” said Nina, “that I’d started anything. Until a few minutes ago.”

  They pulled two wooden benches together so that they faced each other.

  “Okay, you ready to take this down?”

  “Shoot. What happened in the faculty meeting?”

  “Well, two fistfights happened.”

  “What?”

  “There were two fist fights.”

  “Among the faculty?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Why?”

  Sanderson leaned forward:

  “Because the faculty hate each other.”

  “So who had the fights?”

  “The first one happened about twenty-five minutes into the meeting, and was between someone in the Environmental Studies Department and someone in the Gay Lesbian and Transgender Studies Department. Several punches were thrown, and I think somebody got a broken nose, although I couldn’t get close enough to tell. Anyway, the police came and took somebody away.”

  “Who did they take away?”

  “Dr. Judith Anderson.”

  “Wait a minute: this fight involved a woman?”

  “Well, with the Gay Lesbian and Transgender Studies Department––”

  “Yeah, I know. But the second one––”

  “That was clearly two women.”

  “From––”

  “Aaahhh, here it is: The Department of Celtic Ethnography and the Department of Neurokinetic-Forensic Studies.”

  “What happened?”

  “I don’t know. But they just kept talking at once, Rick! Finally, they were standing up and yelling at each other. The only thing they could decide on, was that they needed more time, and it was completely inappropriate for them to act without setting up fact-finding committees. But since a quorum of faculty members wasn’t available––”

  “It’s Friday.”

  “Yeah, that. Since a quorum of faculty members wasn’t available, they’d have to do a mass email to all full-time faculty members and get a ‘Sense of the Faculty’ so they could propose a motion.”

  “When will that happen?’

  “Some time next month, apparently, because, given the time of the semester it is, they all have research conferences to go to.”

  “Next month?”

  “Yes.”

  “But they’re fired!” Nina said.

  Sanderson nodded:

  “Someone kept saying that—and that person was told to sit down, but wouldn’t—and then the first fight broke out. And then the police came.”

  “Sanderson, surely they must have adopted some kind of resolution!”

  “They have one resolution that they decided to email to the faculty. Actually, they wrote three resolutions, but they couldn’t agree on the first two.”

  “What were the first two?”

  “The first one was an appeal to the American Association of University Professors, demanding censure of the president and revocation of accreditation.”

  “Did that get voted on?”

  “No. Five professors got up and said they shouldn’t do it.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because revocation of accreditation would damage their chances of getting their research published.”

  “But they’re fired! They’re fired!”

  “Well, that’s what the second resolution dealt with.”

  “So what was the second resolution?”

  “It was a query asking for more information and clarification of language in the president’s original message to the faculty.”

  “Clarification of language? She said fired. I was there, goddamn it! She just said, ‘You’re all fired!’”

  “Apparently ‘The Sense of The Faculty’—and, of course, there can’t really be a ‘Sense of the Faculty’ until two-thirds of the faculty is there––”

  “Which there will never be because they’re goddamned fired!”

  “––the ‘Sense of the Faculty’ is that the president’s message can be understood in a number of ways, and that it would be imprudent for the Faculty Senate––which is the only Faculty organ empowered to impose censure—to act hastily, without linguistic clarification from the Office of The Provost.”

  “But there is no more Office of the Provost!”

  “Somebody pointed that out, and somebody else said the Provost was in Hattiesburg at a conference, and somebody else said, ‘Doing what?’ And then the lawyer came.”

  “What lawyer?”

  “The one the president sent over with the retirement packages.”

  “What retirement packages?”

  “The ones she’s offering to all faculty who are willing to sign by tomorrow and clean out their offices by Monday.”

  Sanderson breathed deeply. There were just too many words that had to be said in the last three hours, to fit in the lungs of a skinny reporter.

  He acted as though he were preparing for the steeplechase.

  Finally he was ready.

  “Most of these faculty, you understand, have been working here more than ten years. There aren’t many young full-time faculty. When an old full-time faculty member croaks, he gets replaced by three part-timers, who teach twice the number of courses for one-tenth the salary.”

  “But the part-timers don’t do any research.”

  “Which is the other good thing about them. But most of the full-time faculty have been making a hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year or so, with a tenth of it going into TEA CEAF.”

  “Which is what?” asked Nina.

  “The teacher retirement system. So all of these people have at least a hundred and fifty thousand dollars socked away in teacher retirement, which the president offered, over the next five years, to match, at thirty-thousand dollars a year. So they’ll have three hundred thousand dollars apiece. They’ll be on easy street for the rest of their lives,”

  “So how,” asked Nina, “did they faculty react to this?”

  They started yelling at each other again, and…”

  “Don’t worry a
bout it now,” said Barnes. “We’ve got another meeting to go to.”

  And they did.

  CHAPTER SIX: BEES IN SPRINGTIME

  The Old Gymnasium immediately became one of Nina’s favorite places on campus. It harkened back in her mind to Bay St. Lucy, when, on winter nights, the town would pack in to see the basketball team.

  She and Rick made their way in through the double doors and were struck by the sight of unkempt people lying about like street litter, stretched across benches in the concession area, huddled in corners, sitting facing computers at make-shift desks they’d pulled up.

  “Who are these people?” asked Rick.

  “I know who they are! I recognize some of them from Nick’s, yesterday. They’re all adjunct faculty members.”

  “Hi, Nina!”

  “Oh, hi Tyra! Rick, this is Tyra. I met her yesterday. Get her to tell you about the frog.”

  “What frog?”

  “The one that can perform oral sex. Except he––”

  Rick interrupted:

  “Maybe later. But just look! Look at all the part-timers!”

  And it was true. The gym was filling.

  Tyra smiled weakly, looked out over the sea of faces milling around like ants, and said softly:

  “They anon with hundreds and with thousands trooping came attended: all access was thronged, the gates and porches wide, but chief the spacious hall thick swarmed, as bees in spring time…”

  “What’s that from?” Nina asked. “I love it, but I don’t remember it.”

  “Milton. Paradise Lost. We’re all going to be fired, aren’t we?”

  “I don’t know, Tyra. Tyra, do you…do you teach Paradise Lost?”

  She shook her head.

  “No, I teach remedial writing. Part-timers aren’t allowed to teach literature. I love Milton though. She fired the whole faculty this morning, I heard.”

  “Yes, she did.”

  “And the administration, too. Look—there she is!”

  Lucinda Herndon entered the gym from the north portal, walked under the backboard and basket, crossed the free-throw line, and approached half court, where a platform had been set up, with several metal chairs and a microphone.