No Good Deed

You checked your messages after arriving home from a week out of town.  The first one hit you like a sucker punch to the solar plexus.

The message was from the dean’s administrative assistant at Snowflake College.  Specifically, it was from the executive dean’s office at the Quartz City campus.  Quartz City up until now had been the unblemished bright spot in your teaching itinerary.  The students are bright and inquisitive, and you get along great with your teaching colleagues and the classified staff. 

You are informed that Dean Stacy would like to meet with you in person to discuss an “incident” involving you several weeks ago while you were an evaluator at the Quartz City early college high school’s senior project presentations.  One of the other judges, a local community member, had made an allegation about you.  Please call back at your earliest convenience to schedule an appointment.

While you were expecting this, your heart sank nonetheless.  It has become the inevitable cost of doing business.  You’re good at your job, and although you are maybe a touch unconventional in your presentation most of your students like or are at least accepting of your teaching style.  You also are well aware that not everyone finds your personality appealing.  It even elicits hostility from a few individuals from time to time.  Your openness tends to leave you vulnerable to those whom you politely refer to as jerks and to people with issues.

Your accuser appears to straddle both categories.  You know what the charges are, since he pulled you aside after the first day’s presentations and told you what he thought.  (You are thankful that at least what he accused you of did not involve a student.)  Unnerved, you got away from the guy as quickly as possible and lay awake in bed most of that night trying to figure out what the hell had happened.  Before leaving campus that day, you made sure the school secretary scheduled you for a panel other than the one this son of a bitch would be participating in during the next day’s session.

You return to Quartz City the next day to find yourself beckoned into the principal’s office.  The principal, a dark, serious young man, informed you that an allegation had been made.  You deny it as a matter of course, a trifle annoyed by the principal’s condescending demeanor.   You have found through experience with your sons’ schoolteachers that many of them not only talk down to kids, but tend to do so with adults as well.  This gentleman seemed to have lost sight of the fact that you and your fellow college instructors are supposed to be the value added by an early college high school. 

The principal stiffly thanked you for volunteering your time after informing you ominously that he had to inform Dean Stacy of the allegation.  The rest of the day went mercifully well in spite of its awkward beginning.  Several of your former students shook your hand afterward, and introduced you to their parents.  They had heard great things about you and were glad to finally meet you.  One mom even told you her son had chosen your field as his major after taking your class. 

All this notwithstanding, the next couple of weeks were clouded by the accusation against you as you wait for the other shoe to drop.  Naturally, as all bad news seems to in your life, it fell when you were not quite at your emotional best.  In this case, the news arrived after you got home near midnight, jetlagged and facing the glum prospect of waiting all the next day for the airline to recover your inevitably lost baggage.

You call Quartz City the following morning, schedule your appointment with Stacy, and then spend the next couple of days rehashing events in your head trying to make sense of it all.  You consider yourself a man of integrity, and you become rattled and indignant whenever someone calls your character into question.  Your task now is to avoid appearing rattled and indignant.  However, your resentment festers.  Your family has had some degree of association with Snowflake College for nearly forty years.  You’ve taught for them for more than ten.  You gave your time freely and this is what happens?  You seriously consider never giving Snowflake another unpaid second of your time again.  You have already resolved privately to exclude the college foundation as a beneficiary of your will when you found out it had taken money from a certain real estate developer who has lobbied and worked to run public schools like private businesses.   Maybe you should just show up and just teach your scheduled classes from now on.

The distraction of your resentment notwithstanding when the day of the meeting arrives, you’re as ready as you’ll ever be.

Stacy, a tall, rather elegant woman around your own age, smiles warmly when you walk into her office, motioning you to a seat at a conference table.  You’ve never had a discussion with her beyond ordinary small talk, so you don’t know quite what to expect.

Stacy opens the discussion by coming right to the point: “So, tell me in your own words what happened.”

You take a deep breath and tell the story as calmly and clearly as you can.  You relate how you were seated next to your accuser at the first day’s panel.  You describe how, upon finding out the man was a former Marine you mentioned you were a veteran yourself.

“Oh, you’re a veteran!” Stacy exclaims.  “Thank you for your service.”  You smile awkwardly in reply. 

You never know how to respond to this, because thanking vets profusely for their service and describing them as “heroes” even if they were cooks or truck drivers or personnel clerks has become a social obligation of late.  You pride yourself on not having become what you call a “professional vet,” someone whose whole existence, like that of the high school football hero who never is able to recapture his past glories, centers upon that one fact in their lives.

Your accuser is just such a guy.  You’re all too familiar with the breed: overfed, loud mouthed, and jockeying constantly to be the alpha male in every situation.   He regaled you during the breaks between presentations with tales of his storied career as GI Joe with a kung fu grip, before his back gave out on him.  (If it isn't their knees, it’s their back.)  He tells you he’s active in the American Legion, AMVETS, the VFW, the DAV, and the rest of the alphabet soup of veteran’s organizations.  He tells you he served on the county veteran’s affairs commission.  He offers to help you upgrade your disability rating, a result that you know is between unlikely and impossible to achieve.  All the while your eyes are darting across the room looking for someone to catch your eye and rescue you from this blowhard’s narcissistic monologue.

Wincing slightly at the unpleasant memory, you continue your account.  You also point out your unblemished teaching record and your excellent classroom evaluations. 

Stacy, her head attentively tilted slightly to one side, pauses a beat before speaking.  “I see.  You know we have to take these allegations seriously, even if they’re unfounded.  Principal Nathan investigated and could not find any evidence against you.”

“That’s good to know.”

“Yes, and when I called the man—”  Stacy laughs slightly, then continues, “and I don’t even remember his name—“

“That’s all right.  I do,” you reply with a wintry smile.

Stacy goes on, “Anyway, he wasn’t very convincing and some of what he said contradicted what Nathan had told me.”

“That’s because it didn’t happen.”

“I’m sorry about all this.  In any case, since it occurred while you were off contract no mention of this incident will go into your personnel file.”

“That’s a relief.”

“You know, we really value the efforts of adjuncts like you.  Did you know I started out as an adjunct?”  Yes, you know.

The conversation wends on for a few more minutes before petering out.  At the end comes something you don’t expect.  As Stacy shakes your hand before you leave, she thanks you for coming in.  Then she says,

“Please don’t let this incident discourage you from volunteering with Snowflake College in the future.”

While you reply with a smile and a nod, a solitary thought runs through your mind:

Never again.  No fucking way.

© 2016 The Unassuming Scholar