xvii
Virginia, Cont.

Virginia Coyle, for all her other paranoid fantasies, was correct on one point. Considerable discussion between department and administration preceded the maneuvers which resulted in her departure from Novum State in spring of 1991. Some of it was related to Coyle’s performance. Some of it was related to the SUUFAMP contract, and to Linda Tholen’s position as State President.

Marilyn Schneider’s luncheon with Virginia had no apparent impact on the English department’s most junior member. With final exams, the flow of complaints into Marilyn’s office swelled to a small river. Marilyn did her best to keep Virginia’s record clean. “Since her students were not majors—mostly freshmen and sophomores—I didn’t know them well enough to judge the merit of what they said. They sounded sincere, but still I thought Professor Coyle should be given the benefit of the doubt,” Marilyn testified in her deposition. “The problems might have been the result of a few bad apples. I resolved to contain the matter as best I could.” She advised the students, “Before going to see the dean or vice president, or filing a formal complaint, it’s always best to try one more time to work things out with your professor.”

Few returned to Virginia Coyle.

Very few of their friends registered for Virginia’s winter term classes. Marilyn had tried two general memos to the entire department advising tact and sympathy in hearing student complaints. She had tried a luncheon with Virginia. As November turned to December and fall term slouched toward winter, all Marilyn Schneider could do was sit in her office as department chair and hold her breath. Others, with somewhat less trepidation, held their breaths as well: Andy Olsen in his office as VPAA, Vance Hayes in his office as Dean of Liberal Arts, Charles Creed in his position as interim associate dean—a position he had taken partly because it offered release time for Songs of the North Country and partly to counterbalance Brad Newlund’s SUUFAMP presidency.

Then fall term grade rosters arrived at the registrar’s office, confirming people’s worst suspicions: out of 84 students who had begun Virginia Coyle’s two sections of Freshman Composition 101 and one section of Introduction to Literature in September, 23 had dropped the class. 22 had received grades of NC, or “no credit.” Six, all composition students, had received I, “incomplete,” on the understanding that once they performed certain remedial tasks in the NSU Writing Lab, Virginia Coyle would review their work. Twelve students, mostly in the literature class, had received D’s.

21 of 84 students had passed with grades of C, B, or A.

“What this meant,” Marilyn Schneider explained later, “was that 63 of the 84 students who had registered for Dr. Coyle’s courses during fall term would have to repeat the classes . . . if they wanted to graduate. Unless, of course, they transferred to another institution or dropped out of school entirely. If they stayed at NSU, three quarters of Professor Coyle’s students would have to be taught again by her or someone else. I thought that was not an acceptable situation in light of our already crowded classes. If we extended that proportion across the entire faculty, we’d be teaching and re-teaching and re-re-teaching . . . why, it would be impossible!”

On any college campus word travels fast, and at Novum State word travels very quickly. Virginia Coyle started winter term with registrations of 18, 16, and 22 students respectively in her two sections of composition and one literature class. These numbers come from the official report issued December 4 after the last hour of winter term registration, the day before classes begin. The numbers are not significantly different from those on the registrar’s report for November 6, the close of preregistration. Between November 6 and December 4, Virginia had picked up a few students among those who had not preregistered.

Then students returned from the term break, fall grades in hand, and gossip began in earnest. At the beginning of the term, NSU offered students three days of open drop-add, during which they can drop one class and add another without course-change fees. “It’s chaos,” the University registrar testified, “and we don’t keep track of individual changes. Only after those three days are official class rosters printed.” The official class roster for beginning winter term showed Virginia Coyle with 11, 10, and 13 students. (Less than a third of them would finish the term in February with passing grades.)

“I scheduled another meeting with Professor Coyle,” Schneider later testified. “This time I was more firm. I pointed out that her fall grades were unusually low, and her winter classes contained unusually few students. She said she was aware of the fact. She said that students in her fall classes had been abnormally weak. She felt she was being unfairly stereotyped by students in a possibly sexist manner. She hoped she would not be similarly stereotyped by her colleagues. I asked her what she meant by stereotyped. She indicated that she felt Novum State students could not deal with a strong, demanding, competent female professor. I said that I considered myself a strong, demanding, competent female professor, and my classes were always full. Virginia cited ‘several studies’ which showed that members of marginalized groups seeking to make their way in a profession often faced stiffer opposition from already successful members of their own groups than from members of the white patriarchy. I assured her that nobody in the department or university held her any particular ill will, especially myself.

“I told her that several students had visited my office during the previous term complaining of unfair grades and unclear assignments. I told her I tended to discount complaints about grades, and I was certainly not going to read and re-evaluate their papers, as some had requested. I told her that I had suggested they work with Professor Coyle, especially on the nature of her assignments, and they had indicated to me that Professor Coyle was not a person with whom they felt comfortable talking. That was a more serious problem, I suggested to Professor Coyle, than the grading or the assignment business. I urged her to take a more amicable stance toward students. I also offered to let her visit my classes, suggested a few other faculty members whose classes I thought she might profitably observe, and mentioned the possibility of finding a faculty mentor for her, someone inside or outside of the department with whom she could comfortably work.”

“Did you share with her the specifics of the student complaints?” Virginia’s attorney Roger Barclay wanted to know.

“That was the first question she asked,” Marilyn answered. “I told her the students had come to me in confidence and, I felt, with a certain degree of anxiety. I felt that if I was too specific, I might jeopardize their privacy, and the spirit of confidentiality in which they had come to me.”

“What was Professor Coyle’s reaction to your luncheon?” Barclay wanted to know.

“She said she was aware that she had a few trouble-causers in her classes, and she knew how to handle them,” Marilyn had answered. “That was the extent of her reaction. She did not respond in any way to my suggestion she visit other classes, or my offer of a mentor. My impression was that she either didn’t hear what I had said, or was intentionally unresponsive as a means of refusing to acknowledge my warning.”

Virginia Coyle was given another year at Novum “to prove herself.”

And she did prove herself.

Late in January over JumboBurgers and fries at the Silver Dollar Bar, English department chair Marilyn Schneider, VPAA Andy Olsen, Dean Vance Hayes, SUUFAMP President Brad Newlund, SUUFAMP veteran Lloyd Cowley, and interim associate dean Charles Creed discussed the matter of Virginia Coyle.

“She’s a disaster,” Marilyn admitted. “The kids won’t take her. The non-majors are on to her already and the English majors have heard the talk. She’s scheduled for a novel class this spring, and I can already list you half a dozen English majors who have told me directly they will not be taking novel this spring. I’m afraid she’ll get five or four students. Maybe there will be none. To more than one person, and not very discreetly, she has suggested that Anglo-Irish and literature by women are major holes in our curriculum. You can see what she has planned there.”

“She’s already spent her contractual travel allotment,” Dean Hayes reported, “plus some additional money I gave her, flying to ‘professional meetings,’ in California and Maryland, eating fancy meals and staying in fancy hotels. You got any idea what that’s all about, Marilyn? The reimbursement forms say only ‘professional meetings.’ I’ve never called her on it.”

“I see the same forms you do, Vance.”

“You sign them.”

“As the contract requires,” Newlund added.

“We had a bit of a scene once,” Schneider admitted, “when I asked her to be a bit more specific,” Schneider told Hayes.

“Virginia said you refused to sign the reimbursement requisition,” Newlund said.

“I believe I told her that the forms I was accustomed to signing for other faculty members specifically named the conference title, hosting institutions, and participants, as well as providing dates and hotels. Some even provide conference programs. This was not an accusation, Brad, it was an offer: I was suggesting Virginia could recover her conference fee if she provided a canceled check or a program.”

“If Virginia doesn’t want to request conference fees, she doesn’t have to.”

“She could be more specific,” Olsen said. “What is the university getting for its money?”

“That’s the point,” Newlund insisted. “Virginia understood immediately that Marilyn was checking up on her in a way she would not check up on other faculty members. Her request was discriminatory. Virginia has a perfect right, under the contract, to spend her professional development money any way she wishes, as long as it’s for professional development. The faculty member, not a supervisor, determines what constitutes professional development.”

“Some of that was Faculty Improvement funding,” Hayes told Newlund. “Now she’s raising hell because I can’t find her more money for some meeting in February.”

“This from a woman who can’t teach and has published, in her lifetime, one paper,” Schneider concluded. “She’s been very ugly to me, to students, and to other members of the department. She has been a disaster. I have to admit it, and I will.”

“How many days of class would you say she’s missed?” Olsen wanted to know.

“Virginia missed a total of two weeks fall term, including several days right before the deadline for dropping classes. She’s missed four days this term already,”

“Meetings and conferences are accepted in the contract as professional activity,” Newlund pointed out. “Faculty cannot be penalized for attending professional meetings. And the fact that you’re keeping records suggests a prejudice.”

“This is excessive,” Marilyn huffed.

“Has she been reading papers or chairing discussions?” Olsen wanted to know.

“None of us know,” Hayes answered.

“Who in the fuck cares?” Jack asked. “Scholarly conferences are just academics on holiday. Nobody listens to those papers. Nobody learns from those papers. If you have something to say, you don’t have to go to Kalamazoo, Michigan, to babble it to the four walls of a room and six snoozing nuns from Cardinal Stritch. Say it in print in print. If you can’t get it into print, Xerox it and mail the thing to your friends. These conferences are just ass kissing, job hunting, and work-at-your-play vacations. They don’t even have the sense to hold most of them in fun places.”

“Professor Creed has given a few talks in his day,” Newlund said.

“That’s how I know what bullshit it all is.”

“You’ll undoubtedly be giving more once your new book is published.”

“After the book is published. My second, incidentally.”

“Virginia is entitled to a few years of doing what you spent a few years doing,” Newlund argued. “It’s good publicity for the University. Makes us appear quite professional.”

“Only if she’s on the other side of the table,” Andy Olsen said. “If she’s just going to conferences to go to conferences, that’s another thing.”

“She can’t meet students here when she’s in Los Angeles,” Lloyd Cowley said. “That’s why you don’t catch me going to them conferences.”

“By definition, a teacher is in class, teaching his students,” Hayes observed. “Or her students. Pardon me, Marilyn.”

“I don’t buy that argument,” Jack said.

“Novum is a teaching institution,” Schneider insisted.

“Granted,” Jack agreed. “But there are several kinds of students, and we have responsibilities to all of them. We’ve got our students here, the ones who sit in front of us, listening and taking notes and writing exams. We also have our students in Los Angeles and New York, and Swansea, Wales, and all over the world. If we’re cutting edge, as college professors should be, we have something to say to some of them. There are also students who aren’t in college yet, who maybe haven’t even been born yet. In a sense we’re teaching them too, and we should include them in our thinking and allocation of time. I’d say that’s one difference between high school and college teaching, that we reach toward people not in the immediate classroom. I do think conferences are not the way to reach those people. You do it through publication. Talk just evaporates. The published word is permanent.”

“Virginia has an article tentatively accepted for publication,” Newlund announced.

“I know,” Schneider said. “She’s been to me, and I think to Andy too, looking for money for what she calls ‘page costs.’ I never heard of such a thing.”

“It’s quite common in low circulation mathematics and science journals,” Newlund said.

“It’s cheaper than a conference,” said Charles.

“Pay to publish your own article?” Lloyd wanted to know. “Then get promoted for publishing it? What kind of a crazy deal is that?”

“Look,” Marilyn said, “nobody’s going to fault Virginia’s professionalism. She can have all the conferences she wants, and money for her article too, if she can teach. The problem is, she can’t teach.”

“Historically that’s been a difficult thing to prove,” Newlund warned. “Almost impossible.”

“Andy could just dismiss her for cause,” Lloyd suggested.

Newlund objected immediately. “You want her dismissed for cause? After a trial of four months? SUUFAMP would have to grieve that immediately. Anyone else in the union, you’d grieve it too, Lloyd.”

“You’d grieve it if we fired her for cause after nine months,” Olsen pointed out. “You’d grieve it whenever.”

“That’s the job of a union,” Newlund told the vice president.

“I think we should just not hire her next year,” said Hayes. “She’s a fixed-term appointment. We give her proper notice and just don’t hire her. This is her first year. We’ve got until June 1.”

“May 1,” Newlund corrected him. “But SUUFAMP would have to grieve that too.”

“Well fuck that,” Jack said at last. “I’m not saying exactly what I think about this whole business, but I am saying that if the department agrees, for good reasons, it doesn’t want her, and administration agrees it does not want her, and students have made up their mind they don’t want her, I certainly resent my union, into which I have paid dues of time and money these past six years, telling all of us we’re stuck with her.”

“Let us all congratulate Professor Creed,” Newlund announced, “on his move from union to management.”

“A union does not afford cart blanche license for bad worker. Or non-worker,” Jack argued. “The college can’t work that way. The country can’t work that way. If that’s what union is, I quit.”

“I believe I just made that point.”

Marilyn interrupted. “Calm down, fellows.”

“The union advocates for faculty in an adversarial situation,” Newlund insisted. “We’d have to advocate for Virginia as we’d advocate for Jack or for any other member.”

“That’s a crock,” said Lloyd Cowley.

“SUUFAMP had better clean its own house or others will,” Jack growled.

“Linda Tholen has defined SUUFAMP’s position on fixed term hires very specifically,” Newlund argued. “If there’s a fixed term position open in the department next year, first preference goes to a faculty member who’s filled the fixed term position this year.”

“I was there when that position was formulated,” Jack objected. “SUUFAMP bases its position on the assumption that the teacher has done a good, competent job. We all agree that Virginia hasn’t done a good job.”

“We don’t all agree,” Newlund objected. “That’s not been proven.”

“I think that’s been proven.”

“On what evidence? Hearsay? Stories told in a bar by people with extremely prejudicial records in what constitutes an illegal meet-and-confer?”

“Look at her enrollments. Look at her grades.”

“How many of you have ever been in one of Professor Coyle’s classes?” Newlund asked rhetorically. “Only Marilyn. The rest of you have no direct knowledge of her capabilities as a teacher. This whole process is grievable. If it actually results in Virginia’s termination, it would give her a good law suit.”

“My point,” Jack answered, “is that the whole business about giving present employees fixed term teachers first crack at subsequent appointments is designed to protect good teachers from getting screwed over, after they’ve been teaching a few years, get good, and get their salaries up there. It’s designed to keep the experienced teachers because their experience makes them better for students than the newer, inexperienced, and cheaper teachers administration would like to replace them with. SUUFAMP’s position is intended to improve teaching and reward faculty . . . not to retain bad teachers. Follow your reasoning, and a bad teacher—we will refrain from mentioning any names—would be reappointed year after year after year, without ever being reviewed by either her department or administration.”

“As long as there’s a fixed-term appointment for which she’s qualified.”

“Surely that’s not the intent of the contract!”

“I’m giving you the standard interpretation of that clause. That would have to be SUUFAMP’s position.”

“My position is you help the good guys, and kick the bad guys in the balls,” Jack said.

“That’s why you made a lousy union president,” Newlund told Creed.

Jack did not deign to answer.

“That’s why Andy should fire her for cause,” Marilyn insisted. “Right now.”

“Not without a recommendation from the department,” Olsen insisted.

“That wasn’t your position in November.”

“It’s my position now.”

“Firing people is your job, Andy. That’s what you’re paid for.”

“All of this will be grieved,” Newlund promised.

“And administration deals with grievances,” Marilyn insisted. “Not the department. Or the department chair.”

“Maybe Andy could simply not give the English department a position for next year,” Jack suggested.

“We’d certainly grieve that,” Newlund objected. “Given your enrollments.”

“To which Virginia is contributing damned little,” Cowley growled.

“Marilyn claims that three quarters of her fall students had to repeat the class this winter. She’s increasing your enrollments.”

“That’s just a crock.”

“Look, folks,” Newlund said finally. “Let me put the cards on the table. The bottom line is that Linda Tholen is just completing a highly successful four-year term as state-wide president. We all love and respect Linda. We all have an obligation to avoid anything that might weaken the contract. How would that look, coming out of her home institution? Out of her home department? That’s going to be my position as president of Local 12.”

“And the hell with the students, and the hell with your local members and the hell with Linda’s colleagues in the department,” Jack said.

“Have you talked this over with Linda?” Marilyn wanted to know. “She might have an opinion on this.”

“My position reflects her opinion.”

“She hasn’t been around here this fall. She hasn’t seen or heard what Chas and Lloyd and I have heard.”

“She met Virginia at your party in September and was favorably impressed. I understand Virginia and Linda have met on other occasions as well.”

“That’s just bullshit.”

“You asked if Linda and I had talked about Coyle. I’m telling you Linda’s position.”

“If Linda had been here for that paper clip episode. . .,” Lloyd began.

“The paper clip episode?” Newlund asked.

“Kid comes into the office,” Marilyn explained for the benefit of Olsen and Newlund, “and asks to see the chairman of the English department. I tell him that’s me and ask what the problem is. He says, ‘Well, it’s about my English teacher.’

“ ‘Which one?’ I ask, although I already know.

“ ‘Professor Coyle.’

“ ‘What’s the problem?’ I want to know.

“ ‘We just had class. Not a real class or anything, just to hand in papers. I handed in my paper, and she said she couldn’t accept it because it had a paper clip instead of a staple, and it was against her written policy to accept papers without staples. I said okay, wait a minute, I’d run downstairs and get the paper stapled. “But then the paper would be late,” she told me; “and I don’t accept late papers.”

Marilyn slapped the table. “Now this woman is psycho, Brad.”

“Right here in this bar,” Lloyd began. “I get to talking with this fellow, young fellow. Stranger. Never seen him before. Nice fellow. Must have been a couple of weeks ago. He wonders where I work, and I tell him over at the college. Then he starts right in ragging about Virginia Coyle. ‘Novum State?’ he says. ‘I took some classes out there last fall. They got this bitch in the English department. . . .’ Must have gone on half an hour. She’s a legend. And she ain’t been here a full year yet!”

“How about the poster on her door?” Marilyn began.

“I’m going to have to object to this,” Brad Newlund said. “We all know this kind of talk has no place in this company.”

Andy Olsen had been thinking. “Now here’s an idea, fellows,” he said finally. “How about if the English department, based on all the arguments Marilyn has made and all the arguments that would prevent us from cutting your fixed-term spot, requests a tenure-track for next year. I’ll approve that request. I don’t have your figures handy, but everyone seems to think they justify another position.”

“Make that two positions,” Marilyn broke in. “Probably three.”

“No, no, no, young lady. It works this way. I give you one tenure-track position, my end of the deal. You do not request an additional fixed-term position. That’s your end of the deal. Your woman Coyle applies for the tenure-track under the first consideration clause in the contract. The department does what it wishes on her application. I follow the department’s recommendation.”

“I think I have no problem with that,” Newlund admitted. “But I’d have to check first with Linda T.”

Cowley and Hayes nodded. “That’s a good idea.”

Schneider saw a small problem. “My problem is that right now Coyle is an administration problem. A bad teacher is your problem, Andy. You’ve got the authority, under the contract, to resolve that problem, and that’s what you’re paid to do. So just fire the bitch. Your tenure-track scenario puts the problem back in the department, where I don’t feel it belongs.”

“You hired her,” Olsen pointed out. “Then you made me give her a second year.”

“No, Andy, administration hired her. The department recommends, the VPAA hires. That’s in the contract. We’ve had plenty of cases where administration has hired against the recommendations of the department.”

“You were the guys that said hire a minority or don’t hire at all,” Lloyd reminded the vice president.

“Andy didn’t conduct the search that resulted in this woman being hired,” Hayes reminded Schneider. “That wasn’t administration’s doing.”

“You didn’t hire Virginia,” Jack agreed. “But administration produced the directives which . . . well, they didn’t make us hire Virginia Coyle, but they certainly nudged us in that direction. We passed up a few men that I thought looked very good.”

“The whole thing was a crock,” Lloyd insisted. “Just a fiasco.”

“Brad has put his cards on the table,” Olsen said finally. “Now I’ll put mine on the table. My position is, I can’t fire without a recommendation. Somebody will have to write a letter. That is in the contract too, Virginia. If I request recommendations, the department has to provide them.”

“May, if requested, provide,” Newlund corrected him. “The contract reads ‘may, if requested, provide. . . . ‘ ”

“Whatever,” Olsen told the group. “My bottom line is that without a recommendation from the department, I have no reason at all to do anything except rehire Virginia Coyle for next year. I’d suggest you get together, talk this through, and have Charles rough out a letter. He’s a better writer than I’ll ever be, and he’d do it right. Without a letter, I’m doing nothing. And the way your union is arguing, this Coyle woman will probably be here permanently. I’m an administrator, and I can live with anything. We can keep her, we can cut her.”

“That’s not what you were saying last fall,” Schneider reminded Olsen. “ ‘If it’s a management problem, I know I’m going to solve it. If you don’t want it resolved that way, straighten it out before it becomes a management problem.’ ”

“I’ve got your union man to deal with now. I refuse to renew Coyle without a departmental recommendation, your union man here grieves the process. I say he wins his grievance because I didn’t follow procedure.”

“May, if requested, provide,” Newlund repeated.

“Don’t fuck with me, young man. If I thought you had an honorable bone in your body, we’d cut a deal on this. But I know you’re duplicitous and confrontational. I’ve been talking to you for a year and a half now. I know what you’re going to do before you do it.”

Hayes chuckled.

“I’m not acting without a departmental recommendation. As long as there’s a departmental recommendation, we’ll do this any way you want: for cause now from her fixed-term appointment, or my way in a search for a tenure-track position. Now you tell me how it’s going to be.”

“Andy’s way gives us a tenure-track appointment,” Cowley pointed out.

“I want to say this,” Jack broke in finally. For some while he had been lost in thought, his fingers pressed together before his face, his eyes lost in some distant corner of the Silver Dollar. “I’m no fan of Virginia Coyle. That’s pretty well known. I have had an earful from students this past month or so, and I’ve looked over her grade rosters and watched the registration and preregistration numbers. But it really goes against my grain to be sitting with three other people determining the fate of somebody who isn’t present. Virginia doesn’t even know this conversation is going on. It’s like we’re deciding whether to hit her with the 2x4 on the right side of the head, or the left side, or on the top, or maybe full in the face. She doesn’t even know she’s going to get whacked.”

“I have spoken with Professor Coyle on a couple of occasions,” Marilyn said. “Anyone with an ounce of sense. . . .”

“No one from administration has spoken with Professor Coyle, on or off the record,” Jack noted.

“How stupid can the broad be?” Cowley wanted to know.

“You ready to talk to her, Andy?” Marilyn wanted to know.

“A union representative would have to be present at any such conversation,” Newlund objected. “For the record.”

“The point of the conversation, asshole,” Jack said, glaring at his president, “is to be off the record. To give this woman some clear warning. ‘Look, you might see things this way, but we see things this way, and unless this and this and this change, you’re probably going to be looking for a new job next year. You make up your own mind.’ I think people deserve that kind of a clear, unequivocal warning before they get axed, no matter how obvious the situation looks to everyone else.”

“Suppose somebody told you that,” Newlund wanted to know. “Wouldn’t it be construed as a threat? Especially if the person telling you that were the vice president of the university?”

“Better a threat than a bullet,” Jack asserted. “People have a right to at least one warning.”

“I gave her one,” said Marilyn.

“Two.”

“I gave her two.”

“She’s entitled to one from administration. From the people who are going to do the firing.”

“You’re the acting assistant dean,” Hayes told Jack. “And you’re the one who wants a warning. Maybe that’s your job, now that you’re officially part of administration.”

“I’m not going to beat up on other faculty members, including Virginia Coyle. If that’s my job, I quit.”

“You can’t quit both union and management in the same night,” Cowley told Creed.

“You’re not beating up. You’re delivering a warning,” Hayes reminded Creed.

“An off-the-record warning,” Newlund said.

Charles pressed. “It stays off the record. It’s absolutely confidential. We are all clear on that?”

“Okay by me,” Newlund agreed. Olsen, Hayes, and Cowley nodded.

“I don’t know why you’re doin’ this, good buddy,” Cowley said, scratching his head.

“Just make it soon,” Marilyn added.

Charles came home in a troubled mood that evening. “I don’t know why you’re doing this. She’s a bitch,” Kelly told him. “Everyone at school knows that. Let them fire her. She deserves it.”

On the morning of February 8th, with winter term drawing to a close, Jack reluctantly summoned Virginia Coyle to his office, and in so doing set in motion the events which precipitated his own death.

“Would you prefer the door to be open or closed?” he asked before the discussion began. Much thought had gone into that question.

“It makes no difference to me,” Virginia told him. “Whatever you prefer.”

“Would you prefer a third person to be present?” Jack wanted to know.

Again Virginia had no preferences.

“For several reasons, I would prefer the door to be open and/or a third person to be present,” Jack told her. “However, I would like to preserve your confidentiality. I think you’re entitled to confidentiality. I want what I have to say to be confidential, which is why I’m not committing it to paper.”

“I have no preferences.”

“Perhaps I could tape record our discussion.”

“I would hope our relationship is not so acrimonious that such precautions are necessary.”

“Perhaps I’ll just ask our secretary if she’d mind joining us. I’ll ask her not to take notes.”

“If she’s not taking notes, a secretary is not necessary. Perhaps a representative of SUUFAMP should be present.”

“As soon as someone from the union is present, our conversation becomes part of your official record.”

“Is that bad?”

“The best way to insure confidentiality,” Jack explained, “is to erase all records, or to keep no records to begin with. I’m not going to take notes myself. You may take notes if you want, but I hope you’ll just listen carefully. Here is a list of the main points I want to cover. I’ve made a copy for myself, and I’ll give a copy to you.” Jack handed Virginia a very brief outline: (1) grades, (2) enrollments, (3) complaints, (4) AY 1991-92.

“I cannot begin to explain how unhappy I am about this meeting,” Jack began. “I have always considered myself a faculty person. I have always detested college administrators. I have always preached that the first and perhaps the only duty of a conscientious college administrator is to protect the faculty against the combined attacks of self-serving students, ignorant politicians and trustees, and a very unsympathetic and frequently hostile public. I can’t tell you how much I want to be on your side. All I can say, without violating confidences similar to the confidences I want to extend to you, is that I have sat in your chair, not to be admonished, not to be advised, not to be asked for an explanation, not to be offered time for the amendment of life, but to be judged. No, not even to be judged, to be sentenced. I’m not going to go into that, except to say that I want to treat you more fairly than I consider myself to have been treated.”

Virginia Coyle registered no reaction. Jack continued.

“As you are aware, a very large number of the students who registered for your classes last fall did not complete them. Also, a large number of those who completed your classes did so with grades below passing. I believe you and Professor Schneider have discussed that matter.”

“We had words to that effect.”

“I don’t know how this term is going, and to be frank, individual grades are not really my business.”

“That would be my position as well.”

“Collectively, however, all of us have to be concerned when most students who enroll in a class cannot or do not pass that class.”

“If their work is substandard, they have no right to pass the class,” Virginia pointed out. “Surely you’re not directing me to accept substandard work. I’m not aware that there is a set departmental standard for grades.”

“There is no set standard for grades, and I’m not directing you to accept substandard work. I would suggest, however, that C is, by definition, ‘average,’ and B usually means ‘above average’ as D usually means ‘below average.’ The commonly accepted definition of a failing grade is ‘no redemptive social value,’ as the commonly understood interpretation of an A grade is ‘outstanding.’ I’d be the first to admit that grades have become a little inflated lately, so that if anything B now represents ‘average’ and C seems to represent something below average. At least my students are unhappy with a C grade. My point is that over the broad run, a majority of students should not be below average. By definition they can’t be.”

“Are you directing me to change my grading scale? Are you directing me to change grades?”

“I’m not directing you at all,” Jack answered. “I just want to suggest a possible explanation, and see if we can’t follow certain cause-effect relations to their logical conclusions. In fact, I’d like to suggest three possible explanations for the fall grades. One is that last fall you had three abnormally substandard classes, with the result that you had three sections of abnormally substandard grades. That would be a remarkable coincidence, I’m sure we’d agree, and one which would probably not repeat itself this term.

“The second possible explanation for this phenomenon is that your definitions of ‘standard,’ ‘substandard’ and ‘above average’ work are not realistically suited to your students’ capabilities. In this case we’d probably agree that they need some redefinition.

“The third possible explanation is that your definitions of ‘standard,’ ‘substandard,’ and ‘above average’ are realistic, but you have trouble teaching to your own standards.”

“Are you implying that I’m an incompetent teacher?” Virginia wanted to know.

Jack thought for a moment. “Let me set you an analogy. Say I’m a track coach. Because I am a good coach and concerned with my athletes’ well-being, I want them to succeed. I know, however, that the only real growth comes in meeting a real challenge. If I set the high jump bar two feet off the ground, they’ll all clear it, and I’ll tell them all ‘very good, great, really good job,’ but my praise won’t mean anything because they haven’t met a real challenge. So I set the bar at a height which offers a legitimate challenge. Then I coach them in the proper techniques of jumping, and help them meet that challenge. When I say ‘very good, great, tremendous job,’ my praise means something.

“Now let me point out some things about this analogy. First, the students have to be willing to work to clear the bar. If they don’t work, they don’t clear it, and they receive no praise. That’s okay.

“Second, I too must work. I have an obligation to show them how to clear that bar. I don’t just set it up, let them practice, and then cut from the squad everyone who can’t teach himself how to meet my minimum standard. If I can’t show them how to clear the height I have set—I won’t say if I can’t clear it myself—then I have been unfair to them.

“Third, the height at which I set the bar depends partly on my own coaching ability, and partly on whom I’m coaching. If I’m a college coach, I expect my athletes to clear a higher bar than I might if I were a high school coach. And in high school I set the bar higher than I would in grade school. If I’m a grade school coach and I set that bar at six feet, nobody’s going to clear it no matter how well I coach them, no matter how hard they try. I’m setting them up for failure.”

“I don’t understand the analogy.”

“I’m suggesting that you set challenging but reasonable standards for your students,” Charles said, “standards they can reach with good effort on their part and good teaching on your part.”

“I believe I am doing exactly that.”

“Many people here, including students and faculty and administration, believe that the fall grades show you are not. Either the standards are too high, or the coaching is inadequate.”

“What people are these?” Virginia wanted to know. “Have people said I’m an incompetent teacher? Is that what you’re trying to tell me?”

“I would suggest your grades speak for themselves. What conclusions would you draw from the data presented? The conclusion I would draw, and others have drawn, is that the abnormally high number of withdrawals from your classes last fall and this winter might have something to do with your standards or your teaching techniques. If that’s not the explanation for the problem, you might want to provide another. If it is the explanation for the problem, you might want to review both your standards and your teaching methods.”

“I don’t see a problem,” Virginia said distractedly.

“I see a problem.”

Virginia’s eyes lost their distance. “I’m not sure,” she said slowly, “that I can accept these as valid criticisms of my professional performance coming from a man who persists in behavior his personal experience should have taught him was inappropriate and dangerous.”

Jack, who understood he was being threatened, chose his words carefully.

“I am voicing here the collective opinion of several of your colleagues. Let me ignore for the moment your gratuitous and utterly irrelevant argument ad hominem, and refocus our attention on the subject at hand. Whatever you think of me personally, I am merely an individual selected by the Novum State administration to express its collective reasoning.”

Virginia thought a moment.

“Let me rephrase my position,” she said at last. “I cannot accept this as valid criticism of her performance coming from an administration which tacitly approves the behavior of one who persisted in actions that his personal experience should have taught him was inappropriate and dangerous.”

“This is another logical fallacy, Virginia. It’s called shifting the burden of proof. You are entitled to your opinion of me, but it’s not relevant to this issue. It’s your behavior—your professional behavior, not your personal behavior, since we were interested only in your professional capabilities here—it is your behavior which will be evaluated at the end of this year when you seek reappointment. It is not up to me, or the department, or the institution, to prove ourselves worthy of employing you.”

“I hope I have made my point, Professor Creed. If not, perhaps I need to see President Weber.”

Jack sat back in his chair to clear his head and refocus the discussion.

“Virginia, you were not invited here to deliver a message to me. I asked you here because I have been delegated to deliver a message to you. Off the record, and for your benefit, not mine.”

“If you’re suggesting I give easier grades to make students want to take my classes . . . I wasn’t aware that I was on commission.”

“Look, Virginia, granted, we’re not salesmen, we’re teachers. Granted students, like most people, resist change and challenge. It’s hard for them to give up comfortable preconceived notions and move to different levels, different mental geographies. Still, teaching is a seduction.”

“A seduction?”

“A seduction. A teacher has to find a way to make students want to try something they don’t want to try, in the belief that, though initially painful, this new life is ultimately more rewarding than the old. The teacher has to bring the student through that pain and doubt and resistance. It’s difficult, I’ll be the first to admit. Especially in this system where students, and their parents, and politicians, and even administrators tend to view education as a consumer commodity. But that’s the new reality we all live with. If the student is not satisfied, she or he can just walk out and go elsewhere.

“Part of me is on your side here. I don’t like this numbers talk. I myself have had students drop my class because, and I’m quoting, they could get a better deal elsewhere. Another part of me knows that teaching to an empty room, or to four or five students, is not satisfying. I have known cases where that happened, an older person at Busiris where I once taught: four, five, maybe six students a term. I used to weep for her. You don’t want that to happen.”

“Dr. Creed,” Virginia told Charles, “I don’t want your tears.”

“Let me put it differently,” Jack offered. “Let me offer what we might call the Argument from Professional Courtesy. If Professor Jones consistently teaches sections of 12, 13, and 14 students, and Professor Green consistently teaches sections of 25, 30, and 35 students, a certain inequity exists. You may not see that inequity, but I think you will see how some animosity might develop in the mind of Professor Green, who carries 90 students each term, who grades 90 sets of 6 or 8 composition papers, who grades 90 sets of mid-terms and finals, while his or her colleague Professor Jones grades only half that number. I think you will see how a department might become collectively dissatisfied with a colleague who returned 66% or 75% of her students to them to be retaught.

“And I am sure you will see how a department, or an administration, or an institution, given a choice between Jones, who will carry 35 students a term, and Professor Green who will carry 90—or even between Professor Jones and unknown Professor Smith who will carry who knows how many students a term—is probably going to be prejudiced against Professor Jones. If and when Professors Jones, Green, and Smith apply for the same job, who do you think is going to be hired?”

“Is that all you have to say about enrollments?” Virginia wanted to know.

“Let me suggest that maybe the problem is attitudinal . . . which would bring me to the third item on my list.”

“I am very open to my students,” Virginia asserted. “Many are in my office every day discussing their projects and assignments.”

“Virginia,” Jack said in an entirely different tone of voice, “my office—my other office over in the department—is in the upper tower. Every time I climb the stairs to or from my office, which is quite frequently each day, I pass your office. I have on maybe two occasions seen students talking with you. In the doorway, not in the office. The overwhelming majority of times your door is closed and the lights are out. Some of those times are during your posted office hours. Other colleagues and other students have had the same experience.”

“Are you keeping some kind of record?”

“I’m telling you what I know so that you can do something about it. Your students do not find you in any way approachable.”

“That’s an overgeneralization.”

“It’s a generalization based on the people who have been to Marilyn’s office and to my office—this office here—to complain about their experiences in your classes, about their grades and your assignments and your attitude. And to the offices of Dean Hayes and Vice President Olsen.”

“What people are these? I would need specifics before I can respond to any charges.”

“I’m not making charges. This discussion is off the record. It’s off the record for your sake. What I’m trying to tell you is that there is an attitude problem, or a problem with the perception of your attitude. Maybe that’s all it is, a perception. Maybe my advice is just to be more accessible. More friendly.”

“You would appreciate more friendliness?”

“I think that would be a great help.”

“Is that what you called me here to tell me? If that’s your message, I have received it, and I will feel free to go.”

“The message is this,” Jack concluded. “There is some potential trouble. The trouble lies in the areas of grades, enrollments, and student complaints. I’m trying to warn you of the trouble, because I think it might have an impact on your colleagues, the school, the students, and you. What I’m trying to do is warn you.”

Virginia rose. “I thank you for this talk,” she told Jack. “It has been so illuminating, and I appreciate being, as you put it, warned of potential trouble. I shall try to remember that teaching is a seduction. I shall try to be more friendly, more—how did you say?—accessible.”