The raised seating in the small auditorium reminded me of a story I had heard several times in my teaching days. Male architects, the story went, designed most buildings and they made the angle of ascent in these raised classrooms such that the male professors had the optimum opportunity to look up the coeds’ skirts. This was probably an urban legend, but in any case it didn’t take into account today’s relaxed dress code. Most of the students, female and male, wore jeans in winter so there wasn’t much leg for Mark to see.
Mark started the lecture promptly at eight. Before he had a chance to say many words, a young woman in the middle of the front row raised her hand. Mark recognized her. She stood up and said in a loud voice, “Dr. Pappas, I just want you to know that a lot of the students support you. We believe that you have been wrongly accused. We will do everything in our power to help you.”
She sat down and applause broke out. Mark looked flabbergasted, the way I felt. Wasn’t this Star Chamber proceeding supposed to be secret? I looked at the audience; about half of the students were applauding. I craned my neck to see Mark’s accuser in the back row. Her eyes were cast down. One curious thing: I was the only one looking at her. Could it be that they knew about the charges but not who had made them?
Mark continued with his lecture, stumbling a few times before he got a rhythm going. My heart went out to him.
Somehow, Mark got through the lecture in one piece and even impressed me. He gave a coherent presentation that I understood. He told a couple of jokes and elicited some chuckles from the audience. When he finished he received another round of applause, again from about half the students. He didn’t acknowledge it, pretending to be busy putting his notes into his attache case. By the time I stood up and looked around, his accuser had disappeared.
The students filed rapidly out of the lecture hall. Mark remained occupied until they were gone and then looked up. In answer to my unspoken question he said, “Nobody is supposed to know about this. They told me it was completely confidential.”
“Somebody didn’t get the word,” I said. I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised. Bad news has a way of leaking out, especially if someone has a reason for wanting it to be public.
As we walked up the sloping aisle toward the exit I heard loud, human-sounding noises coming from outside the hall. Now what? We reached the back and could see outside. A bunch of students, mostly women but also a few men, paraded in front of the entrance, carrying placards and shouting. I couldn’t make out what they were shouting because they drowned each other out, but the placards had words written on them.
Samples were: “RAPISTS ROT IN HELL,” “HARASS THE HARASSER,” and one particularly nasty one carried by a coed who looked like a sumo wrestler: “DO UNTO OTHERS: FUCK MARK PAPPAS.”
The signs reminded me of the Free Speech Movement in Berkeley in the sixties, but the words on these signs were intensely personal. Did they have constitutional protection here at Crescent Heights College? Was it only Mark who didn’t?
Mark clearly wanted to get away from this. I said, “Go on. I’ll see you later.” He gave me a questioning look, but I said, “I’ll be all right.” I didn’t think the students would attack me, but I didn’t have the same confidence in regard to Mark.
He left the scene at a fast walk. Some of the students followed him, but they had to practically run to keep up. The number thinned and when there were only a few left he stopped and confronted them. He talked to them for a few seconds. Apparently, whatever he said made an impression because when he went on and disappeared around a building they came back to the group.
The others had stopped chanting now that the object of their wrath was gone. I went up to the sumo wrestler and said, “What’s going on?” She looked at me suspiciously. I didn’t know whether she associated me with Mark because we had come out of the hall together. I said, “I’m Professor Morgan.”
“Hi, Professor,” she said. “Dr. Pappas has been charged with sexual harassment.”
“How do you know that?”
“Everybody knows it.” She waved her hand in a big circle, indicating the whole world.
“Do you know the specifics of the charges?” I asked, trying to sound professorial.
“Uh…no, but harassment is harassment.”
“Who preferred the charges?”
“That information is confidential.” She looked shocked that anybody would even ask. She obviously didn’t know.
I wanted to ask her why the name of the harassee should be confidential if the name of the harasser wasn’t, but that would just get me tied up in my underwear. Instead, I said, “To summarize, you know that a charge has been filed against Dr. Pappas, but you don’t know who filed it. You also don’t know the nature of the charge. You have no idea whether Dr. Pappas is guilty of the charge. And yet you have the right to harass him with your obscene shouting and obscene signs.”
A circle of placard-carrying students formed around me as I spoke, and the expressions on their faces were not pretty. I looked from one to another and tried not to panic. They wouldn’t hurt an old woman-would they?
The sumo wrestler appeared to be their ringleader. She spoke slowly, emphasizing each word. “We will not tolerate male pigs on this campus. You have been oppressed your whole life and are used to being oppressed, but our generation isn’t. Do you understand me?”
I didn’t know I had endured a lifetime of oppression. I also couldn’t picture anybody oppressing her, but I understood her all too well. I also understood that it was time for me to leave. Mustering all the dignity I could, I walked between her and another student and on toward the administration building. I resisted the desire to run and tried to heed the words of Satchel Paige: “Don’t look back because somebody may be gaining on you.”
As soon as I had put enough distance between me and the demonstrators so that I could breathe I started to look around. Mark had given me a map of the campus, which had modern buildings and was set among hills that would be green as soon as leaves appeared on the trees. The well-kept lawns were already green. Yellow forsythia and yellow daffodils had started to blossom in flowerbeds beside the walks.
The bright greens and yellows put me in a better mood. I walked up marble steps and through doorways with glass doors into the Administration Building.
Chapter 3
A functional and impersonal counter greeted me as I entered an office directly opposite the entrance. A student type sat behind the counter, busily staring at a computer monitor. I wondered what she was looking at. I had used computers when I was a professor, but I had never owned one and I didn’t derive much pleasure from watching a screen. I preferred reality.
She reluctantly dragged her eyes away from whatever enthralled her and said, “Can I help you?”
I repressed a desire to say, “I don’t know, can you?” and to give her a lecture on the difference between “can” and “may,” but that job belonged to an English teacher. I said, “Yes. My name is Professor Lillian Morgan. I would like to speak to Priscilla Estavez.” Mark had given me her name.
“Do you have an appointment?”
“ No. I just need five minutes of her time.”
“What’s it in regard to?”
“I would like to ask her some questions about your sexual harassment policy.” I tried to say that in a positive way.
“She’s in a meeting.”
“That’s okay. I’m in no hurry; I’ll wait.”
“I don’t know how long the meeting will last. You can have a seat if you want to,” she said, doubtfully.