Chapter 10

Although only a quarter past six, it was already dark outside on the relatively warm December evening of the last day of classes. Cindy McMann knew the feeling wouldn't last for more than a day or two, but it seemed like the beginning of a long holiday since the weekend and a two day reading period lay ahead before the start of final exams. Cindy knew she was fifteen minutes late as she entered the Turkish restaurant, but there was Charles Truehart sitting in the waiting area--wearing his black suit, just as she had asked him to.

He stood up when he saw her. "Hello, Cindy. It's been a long time. It was quite a surprise to get that call from you yesterday."

"Hi Charles! Let me just hang up my coat." Cindy quickly dashed into the self-serve cloak room (it was that kind of restaurant) and re-emerged revealing herself in a short, black cocktail dress and black stockings.

"Wow! You sure look nice!" exclaimed Charles. "What is going on? What's the mystery reason for calling me to meet here tonight all dressed up?"

"Let's sit down and I'll tell you," she responded. They were quickly ushered to a table and given menus. Charles had never been to a Turkish restaurant, so Cindy recommended that they start with dolma and then have doner kebabs. When the waitress came to their table, Cindy gave their order and also asked for a bottle of merlot.

"That's kind of expensive, isn't it?" asked Charles.

"Not really," said Cindy. "Besides, this is all my treat, so don't worry about it."

"Cindy, what is this all about?" Charles asked again.

Cindy looked downward as she said, "I found out it wasn't you. And I'm really sorry."

"You found out what wasn't me?"

"You weren't the Charles Truehart that the graffiti was written about."

"I could have told you that," said Charles. "In fact, I tried to but you wouldn't listen. But all that was a long time ago. Why is it being brought up again now? And who has convinced you that I am innocent?"

Cindy was glad that Charles did not appear to be angry. The fact that he had agreed to meet her at all had led her to expect that he wouldn't be.

"Something odd happened yesterday morning, before I called you," began Cindy. "I actually got a call from a Washington Post reporter--Kate Morgan. She was the one who told me that it wasn't you."

Charles looked at her incredulously. "A Washington Post reporter called you to say that some graffiti written about me in a woman's lavatory a couple of months ago was not true?"

Cindy laughed. "No, that's not the main reason why she called. I'm not quite sure why she wanted to talk to me in particular. She said she was talking to a number of people at NDU about the whole sexual harassment situation and those `unwanted' posters in The New Dominion."

"Oh, yeah," said Charles. "I remember seeing a new one this week--something about a professor telling someone that if she wanted a higher grade, she should wear a shorter skirt."

"It was about a Professor Gibson. I've never heard of him. Have you?"

"No," said Charles. Like most white students, they were only vaguely aware that African-American literature was even taught at NDU, and were not at all aware of who taught it. "I'm kind of surprised that a professor would say that."

"Well, yeah. Wasn't that outrageous?"

"No, what I mean," said Charles, "is that I wouldn't have thought it was necessary. Although not surprising at the end of spring semester, I'm always amazed at the number of girls who wear incredibly short skirts to final exams even at the end of the fall semester. Have you ever noticed that?"

"I have actually," Cindy said laughing. She usually did it herself, but didn't think Charles needed to know. "I remember during my first semester at NDU, one of my girlfriends who was a sophomore told me: `Wear a short skirt to all in-class exams. It might not help your grade, but it sure can't hurt it either!"

Both of them laughed, but Charles shook his head. "I feel sorry for these professors with girls teasing them like that. It's kind of sad that these older guys must think you're attracted to them, only to find out that you're just working on your grade."

Cindy snorted in contempt. "They know better than that! And any who don't should!"

The wine arrived. When the waitress began the ritual of pouring a small amount in the man's glass for him to taste it first, Cindy grabbed the glass, swallowed the wine, and pronounced it acceptable. The waitress looked scandalized but said nothing. She poured out their two glasses and left the bottle with them on the table.

"I don't think women in Turkey would do what you just did," commented Charles.

"Well, shit!" said Cindy. "I'm the one that's buying. It's a sexist ritual anyway. They should pour a little in both glasses."

"If there were a party of ten or more, the bottle would be practically empty by the time everyone was given a taste. It's more efficient if just one person tries it," said Charles.

"Yeah, but does it always have to be the man?" countered Cindy, her voice rising. Then, in a lower voice: "But this wasn't what I wanted to talk to you about. Let me tell you more about what that reporter said. One of the things she asked me was if I remembered what one of the `unwanted' posters said about a Charles Truehart. When I told her I remembered it, she asked if I knew a Charles Truehart. Without telling her about us, I said that I knew you and that you were a student. Then," Cindy said dramatically, "she asked me if I knew the other Charles Truehart at NDU--apparently someone in food service. I said that I didn't. Then she said that he was observed by a security camera repeatedly molesting several of his female assistants. He's been fired and is being sued both by the women and by the university."

"That's funny," observed Charles. "I don't remember reading anything about this in The New Dominion."

"I don't think it was in The New Dominion," said Cindy. The reporter, Kate, said she learned about it from the university administration."

The dolma arrived. Charles started to pick one up with his fingers, but Cindy indicated that he should eat it with a fork. Cindy refilled their wine glasses.

Charles shook his head. "I still don't see why anyone from the Post would be interested in something as unimportant as this--even if it does vindicate me."

"Sexual assault is not unimportant, Charles," Cindy informed him primly. "Besides, it wasn't just you--I mean, the other Charles Truehart--which she was mainly asking me about. She was more interested in talking to me about Professor Barnes."

"Professor Barnes?"

"Yeah, you remember that `unwanted' poster: `Prof. Barnes touched me inappropriately.' She wanted to know if I was the one who wrote that."

Charles sat upright. "Were you?" he asked. "More importantly, did he?"

"No and no," Cindy replied. She was touched that he seemed both jealous and protective. "Well, the answer to your second question is a little more complicated." She then told him the whole story of what happened when she went to Prof. Barnes's office after the first midterm in his IR Theory class, though in considerably less emotional tones than she had originally related it to her roommate, Tiffany.

"He touched you on the shoulder because you were crying? I don't think that constitutes sexual assault, or harassment, or whatever," commented Charles.

"Well, I guess not," Cindy admitted. "At the time, though, I was really indignant. In fact, I went and complained about him to the Sexual Assault Services Office."

"Cindy, you didn't!" exclaimed Charles.

"It wasn't a formal complaint," she explained. "Just an informal one. It's not really serious. It was Tiffany who talked me into going there."

Cindy giggled. "Actually, the main reason I went was to try and find out if anyone had filed a complaint against you."

The doner kebab arrived. They were both quiet for a few minutes as they ate the tender meat and the pomegranates in the yogurt sauce it was smothered in.

"I wonder if Professor Barnes thinks you're the one who wrote, `Prof. Barnes touched me in `intimately' or whatever it was," mused Charles.

"`Inappropriately,'" Cindy corrected. "I don't think so. Why would he think that?"

"If I were him and I knew you filed some sort of complaint against him, I would just assume that you were the one who wrote that graffiti. I presume he knows that you filed a complaint against him?" asked Charles.

"No," said Cindy. "Like I said, it was an informal complaint. I didn't sign anything or officially give my name."

They ate in silence for awhile longer.

"Well, if it wasn't you, I wonder who wrote, `Prof. Barnes touched me inappropriately,' then," said Charles.

"I don't know," responded Cindy. "When that `unwanted' poster was first published, I just assumed that it was another female student describing a separate incident with him."

"But as my own case shows," Charles remarked, "this sort of graffiti is not always accurate."

"It was accurate about Charles Truehart the food service manager," Cindy corrected, "but not about Charles Truehart the student."

They ate a little more. This time, Charles refilled their wine glasses.

"I wonder if that Washington Post reporter somehow knew that you had filed a complaint against Barnes," suggested Charles. "Maybe that's why she called to see if you wrote that graffiti about him."

Cindy considered this over a sip of merlot. "I'm trying to think of the exact words she used. She asked if I knew who might have written the graffiti about Professor Barnes, not whether I had actually done so. But she then asked if I or anybody I knew had filed a sexual assault complaint against him."

"What did you tell her?" asked Charles.

"I told her that I knew of no such complaint, and that I myself thought he was a terrific professor," Cindy answered. "Since I'm not going to follow through on that complaint, I didn't see any point in telling her about it."

"Why are you so positive about him now? I thought you didn't like him."

"I didn't at first, but I've warmed up to him since then," Cindy explained. I really studied hard after the first midterm and came to understand what he meant about the difference between description and analysis. I got an A on the second midterm, I feel very confident that I'm going to ace the final as well.

"Besides," she continued, "I found IR theory to be pretty interesting, especially as the class looked at the twentieth century. Barnes even gave a pretty good lecture about feminist IR theory. That was pretty cool!"

Someone took away their empty plates. When the waitress came to enquire whether they wanted dessert, Cindy ordered baklava and Turkish coffee for them both.

"I've already signed up for his International Political Economy class in the spring, and I plan on taking his Latin American politics seminar next fall," Cindy continued.

"Wow! You've really become a fan of his," commented Charles. "I think I'm jealous."

"Oh, Charles! It's not like that," she reassured him. "You know what I like about Barnes? He's one of the few professors I've had here who will go to the bother of telling you what you're doing wrong and how you need to improve. Most don't care enough to do that, you know? And when someone like Barnes does tell you that you're doing well--you know you've earned it! I have to admit, though, that being away from you for most of the semester gave me a lot more time to concentrate on my classes."

"Oh, so it's my fault you didn't do well on that first midterm, is it? By the way, what was it like in his class after that `unwanted' poster appeared about him?" asked Charles. "I certainly received some negative reaction for a week or so after the one my name was in appeared."

Cindy hung her head. "Yes, Charles, I know. I slapped you. I'm really sorry."

"I wasn't talking about that," said Charles. "I meant that for a week or so, the girls in my classes tried to sit as far away from me as possible. Some even put their arms across their breasts if I looked in their direction. But then it all died down. What was it like to be in Barnes's class when the `unwanted' poster came out about him?"

Cindy thought about this as the coffee and baklava were served. "Normally when he walks into the classroom, people just keep on talking with one another until he starts lecturing. But I remember when he came into class for the first time after the poster appeared, everyone stopped talking. He didn't say anything, and nobody said anything to him--at least, not in class. After that, it went back to normal. Still, he completely stopped making wisecracks the way he did beforehand."

They ate their dessert and were sipping their thick Turkish coffee. "This is really sweet!" remarked Charles. "So Barnes never indicated that he suspected you of writing that graffiti even after the scene you two had in his office?"

"It's funny," said Cindy, "but I don't think he even remembered that. The Sexual Assault Services Office told me not to go back to his office, but I did after the second midterm to ask him about his class next semester. He didn't even remember my name! I had to introduce myself to him all over again. I thought he would remember what happened before, but he sure didn't seem to."

"Most of the professors I've had wouldn't recognize me outside of class," said Charles. "I guess there's a lot more of us than there is of them. Still, I would think a pretty girl like you would be more memorable."

"That's a sexist thing to say, Charles," Cindy admonished, "but I do appreciate the compliment."

The bill came, and Cindy grabbed it. When Charles reached for his wallet, Cindy insisted that she was paying in order to atone for having slapped him and for doubting his loyalty to her. "You haven't been seeing anyone since then, have you?"

"I haven't, actually," he said. "I guess I've been concentrating on my studies too this semester. Well, thank you so very much for the dinner. By the way--why did you choose this place? We never came here before."

Cindy smiled mischievously. "I chose this restaurant because it is right next to the Holiday Inn where I booked a room for us. Actually, I've already checked in; that's why I was a little late. This way, we get to avoid having to deal either with your roommate or with mine."

Charles beamed with happy anticipation. "Cindy, what a great idea!"

"Shall we go?"

"All right!" As they stood up, Charles furled his brow. "So is there going to be a story in the Post about Professor Barnes and me?"

"I think it's going to have more do with Professor Gibson," she said. "He's some sort of big fish or other. Sorry, but I think you--or Charles Truehart--won't get much attention."

As they went inside the cloak room, Charles said, "You know, Cindy, if you're
not serious about pursuing a complaint against Professor Barnes, I hope you withdraw it. He might be in trouble because of it."

"Don't worry, I will. Barnes doesn't know it yet, but he's going to be writing law school recommendations for me next fall. I can't have him resigning in disgrace or anything before that!"

Alone in the cloak room, Cindy and Charles indulged themselves in a long kiss.

"In just a few minutes," she said afterward, "I too will truthfully be able to write that Charles Truehart fondled me." Taking his hand in hers, she added, "But it won't be a complaint."

Chapter 9

Charles Gibson was the only African-American who was a university professor at NDU. A highly prominent scholar in the field of African-American literature, he had been lured to NDU from Duke University three years ago with a nine month salary of $125,000 plus guaranteed summer support money. Gibson loved being in the Washington, D.C. area where he received far more media coverage than he ever had before. He had rapidly discovered, though, that the quality of both the students and the faculty at NDU was not nearly as high as at Duke. Still, it was nice to be a big fish in a small pond.

Someone knocked on the door of his office. "Come on in," he called.

The door opened and in walked a very attractive African-American woman wearing what was obviously an expensive suit--something he would expect to see a young woman wear in an office but not on campus. He recognized that she was one of his students but did not know her name.

"Hello, Professor Gibson," she said. "I'm Genevieve Lacouture from your Introduction to African-American Literature class."

"Oh yes," said Gibson. "Please sit down. What can I do for you?"

"I know I shouldn't have waited until the last week of the semester to come talk to you," she said as she sat down. "I'm afraid I've been very busy with my part-time job this semester. In fact, I'm going there right after I talk to you. The point is this: I'm very worried about my grade in your class. You gave me a B+ on the midterm and an A- on the paper. There's only the final exam left, and I want to do as well as possible on it. So I thought I'd better come and talk to you about what I need to do to improve my grade.

"I'm a computer science major," she continued. "I'm taking this course to fulfill my humanities requirement. I'm not used to literature courses which contain a high degree of ambiguity."

Gibson was a little taken aback by this. "Computer science?" he asked incredulously. "Why are you majoring in that? Why aren't you majoring in African-American studies, or sociology, or something else that's relevant to black folks?"

"Well, to tell you the truth, I was just never very interested in all that. In fact," she confessed with some embarrassment, "I'm only in your course mainly because it's the one lit class that best fit into my schedule. I got into computer science when I was in high school. And, I'm proud to admit, I'm pretty good at it.

"Besides," she said with a knowing smile, "I think that a B.S. in computer science will get me a much higher paying job than a B.A. in African-American studies."

"So is money all that you're interested in?" asked Gibson, shaking his head. "I really just don't understand the black students here at NDU. All you're interested in is yourselves as individuals. You seem to have no concern for advancing civil rights or other black causes like my generation did. Why, when I was at Berkeley in the '60s..."

"Yes, yes," Genevieve interrupted, displaying some impatience. "We know you were at Berkeley in the '60s. You've mentioned it in class several times this semester."

Gibson wondered: Am I getting old? Am I repeating myself without knowing it? "The point I'm trying to make," he said, "is that my generation worked together for black rights. Yours isn't doing that."

Genevieve shrugged her shoulders. "Since your generation largely succeeded at this task, my generation can now move on to something else. Perhaps we could move on to discussing your expectations for the final."

Now Gibson was annoyed. "Your generation may think it can move on, but it is deluding itself. My generation worked hard for affirmative action. But affirmative action is now being destroyed bit by bit."

"I just see it differently," responded Genevieve. "Whatever benefits affirmative action may have provided decades ago, it's a program that has now outlived its usefulness. Educated African-Americans--especially ones with technical training--can get jobs as easily as anybody else. And isn't it better that corporations want to hire us because we have knowledge and skills they value instead of because they need to fill some federally mandated quota?"

"And look what's happening," Gibson continued, "to congressional redistricting to ensure black representation in the House. The courts are slowly but surely overturning it, resulting in the election of a less and less diverse House of Representatives with each passing election."

"My father says that the only thing redistricting to create congressional districts with black majorities ever accomplished," countered Genevieve, "was to ensure the election of white Republicans in all the surrounding districts."

"And it's the Republicans in Congress," thundered Gibson, "that have slashed social programs which help disadvantaged blacks."

"My father also says that it's these misguided social programs of the past that have provided skewed incentives to African-Americans, actually making it unprofitable for those on welfare to work their way out of it," said Genevieve. "We don't need welfare! We don't need special programs! We can succeed on our own!"

Gibson was disgusted. "Just what does this father of yours do for a living anyway?"

"He's a vice president at Dillo Petroleum Services in Fairfax," Genevieve replied proudly.

"Aha!" said Gibson. "He's one of those lucky blacks who succeeded thanks to affirmative action but who now want to end it for the rest of us."

"My father succeeded," Genevieve responded hotly, "through hard work and determination! His parents were poor immigrants from Haiti! They worked hard to send him to college to become a petroleum engineer! It wasn't easy--nobody handed him anything. He got where he is through his own hard work--and through his ability to work with others.

"I've traveled with my father to the Caribbean and to Africa," she continued. "Believe me: African-Americans are far better off and have far more opportunities than do blacks in those countries. And I wouldn't want to be a black person in Europe either. Whatever their situation here, nobody questions the fact that African-Americans are American. In Europe, though, blacks can never be anything besides West Indians, West Africans, East Africans, or even Americans--but never Europeans."

Gibson knew that immigrant blacks from the Caribbean and Africa as a group scored far higher than other African-Americans in indicators such as level of education and income. There was no consensus of opinion as to why this anomaly existed. Gibson couldn't explain it either. But at least now, he thought, he understood where this Genevieve was coming from.

"I don't deny," he said, "that blacks in the U.S. are far better off than blacks elsewhere. Nor do I deny that black progress received a lot of help from whites, especially during the 1960s and early 1970s. What I see now, though, is that a lot of that progress--affirmative action, congressional redistricting, and social programs--is being reversed, mainly by whites.

"It kind of makes you wonder, doesn't it?" he asked. "Why did whites go to the bother of furthering black progress back then only to reverse it now? Well, it just so happens that I have a theory about that. Would you like to hear it?"

Gibson didn't wait for her to answer. "In the past, whites were not an undifferentiated group in this country. You had the Irish, the Italians, the Scandinavians, the East Europeans, and others. Up through the 1950s, though, the whites that controlled America were the WASPs--the white, Anglo-Saxon Protestants. But thanks to all the changes resulting from the New Deal in the 1930s and World War II, these other whites became increasingly powerful and threatened to displace the WASPs.

"It was no accident," he continued, "that most of the white liberals in the 1960s were WASPs. They decided to support the cause of black progress not out of any love for us blacks, but as a way of controlling these other, rising white groups.

"Now since then, ironically enough, distinctions among whites have virtually disappeared. Whereas before whites tended to marry strictly within their narrower ethnic groups (WASPs with WASPs, Italians with Italians, etc.), these barriers have now completely broken down. WASPs can hardly be said to form a distinct group any more. I guess they all got bored with each other and married someone else--just as long as they were white.

"But also since then, something happened that the white liberals who supported black progress in the 1960s never seem to have actually expected: the creation of a strong, vibrant black middle class. Just like the WASPs felt threatened by the rise of other white groups in the past, whites as a whole feel threatened by the rise of blacks now. And just as in the past the WASPs sought to keep down those other white groups through supporting blacks, whites now seek to keep down blacks through supporting other groups. And do you know who those other groups are?"

Again, Gibson did not wait for Genevieve to answer. "Hispanics and Asians to some extent. But an even more insidious way of keeping down blacks is the white enthusiasm for the women's movement. And here their intentions are blatant: the women they mainly have in mind to support are white women. So right at the point where more and more talented black men are poised to move into the top ranks of society, they are being pushed aside by white women in the name of gender equality."

"If all that is true," responded Genevieve, "I wonder where that leaves me. It seems to me that as an African-American I would lose, but as a woman I would win."

Gibson shook his head. "This is the problem with today's young blacks--especially young black women. You don't seem to realize that what little you gain as a woman from the white-inspired women's movement would be greatly outweighed by what you would lose as a black."

"I'm not sure about that argument," said Genevieve. "It seems to me that progress for African-American women is hindered far more by African-American men than it is by white women. It's not white women who are getting black teenage girls pregnant and then abandoning them."

"I can see," said Gibson, "that their strategy of divide and conquer has certainly worked with you!"

"Maybe women of all races really have more in common with one another than with the men from their own. Maybe it's the false barrier of race that has kept women divided up to now," she countered.

Gibson shook his head again. "You know, I really don't understand today's young women--black, white, or whatever. You say you're for women's rights. But you've accepted restrictions on yourselves that the women of my generation never would have accepted." At least, not back in the 1960s and 1970s when they were young, he thought.

"What do you mean?" asked Genevieve.

"I mean all these new rules preventing relationships between men and women who work together. But when they do get together--as they inevitably do--and it's somehow discovered, it's always considered to be the man's `fault' that it happened."

"It is clearly inappropriate," Genevieve informed him, "for male supervisors to be pressuring their female subordinates for sex."

"Oh, Lord! Listen to you!" said Gibson. "Not every male is a supervisor to every female in an organization. And sex doesn't happen just because men `pressure' women for it."

"Are you sure about that?" asked Genevieve sarcastically.

"It seems to me," continued Gibson, "that if a man and woman who work in the same organization want to get together, it's nobody's business but their own."

"Can we please talk about the final exam," implored Genevieve.

"And what does it matter if they are supervisor and subordinate anyway? If they're both consenting adults, what does it matter? Who else's business is it?

"What if the shoe were on the other foot?" he continued. "With all these women getting ahead, they have subordinates now. What if a female supervisor wanted to get together with one of her male subordinates? Would you modern women oppose that?"

Genevieve did not respond.

"I can just tell what you're thinking," said Gibson. "You're thinking no female supervisor would want to get together with a male subordinate, aren't you? That wouldn't benefit her nearly as much as having an affair with a male supervisor, and then reporting him for taking advantage of her after she's gotten everything she can possibly get from him."

Genevieve did not look happy. "You know, I really don't think..." she began.

"Whenever I read these stories," Gibson plowed on, "about women charging male supervisors with pressuring them for sex after being in a relationship with them for a considerable period of time, I really wonder what the truth actually is. Women aren't all innocent little angels. Look at the way they dress! They're sure not trying to hide the fact that they're women!

"Let me tell you, things were a lot different when I was at Berkeley in the '60s. Back then, young women were trying to break away from sexual restrictions, not wrap themselves up in them. There was none of this nonsense about `inappropriate relationships' either. I remember that it was quite common for female students to have affairs with their professors. And nobody objected either--except the professors' wives, if they found out," he laughed.

"Professor Gibson!" exclaimed Genevieve.

"And the women were open and honest about it, too. I well remember how female students would boast about their conquests among the professors and the graduate teaching assistants."

Gibson had been a T.A. back then. There must have been half a dozen girls he ended up in bed with whom he met through their being students in his discussion sections. They had all been white girls too. Each had told him that she had never had sex with a black man before. He was `exotic' for them--just as they were for him. But so what? That was cool!

"With the new Victorianism that reigns at universities now, though," he continued, "male professors are scared that if they even glance at their female students, they'll be charged with `sexual assault' or some such nonsense!"

There had been three other student girlfriends later when he was a young professor at Duke. These relationships had lasted longer. Unlike his girlfriends at Berkeley, these three had all been graduate students. Like the others, they had also been white. Now that he was thinking about it, he realized that none of his student girlfriends had ever been black. More to the point, he hadn't had any student girlfriend--whether black, white, or whatever--in many years. This was a result, Gibson thought, of the new Victorianism on college campuses. At least, that's what he hoped it was. He certainly hoped it wasn't because of the age difference between him and the students. It was funny how, with their coming and going, the students he taught remained in a constant age range while he got older. Not that being in his late fifties was really all that old, of course.

"Look what's happened right here at NDU," he went on. "The `unwanted' poster in this worthless student newspaper--nothing like what we had at Berkeley--claimed to reprint graffiti written in one of the women's bathrooms about a professor here. I think his name was Barnes. What did it say about him?"

"`Prof. Barnes touched me inappropriately,'" said Genevieve

He certainly wouldn't mind touching this Genevieve, he thought. It would probably do this over serious girl a world of good. "Oh, so you saw that?" he asked. "I guess everyone did. Well, I bet the whole thing is a fraud. I'll bet he never touched anyone. Some girl tried to get him to raise her grade, and when he wouldn't, she wrote this thing about him just to cause trouble for him."

Gibson had heard that Barnes was going up for tenure this year. If that was true, he knew that this statement published in the paper--no matter how false--would cause him quite a lot of trouble. The bitch who wrote it probably knew Barnes was going up and was deliberately trying to sabotage him. Well, she wouldn't succeed if Charles Gibson had anything to say about the matter. And he did: he was on the promotion and tenure committee for the College of Arts and Sciences this year. If Barnes really was going up, Gibson decided that he would get himself appointed as the guy's liaison to the committee. And that reminded him...

Gibson looked at his watch. "Oh, shit!" he exclaimed. I've got to get going. The organizing meeting for P&T committee is about to start."

Genevieve had no choice but to stand up just as he did. "But we didn't talk about the final!" she said with exasperation. "I really wanted your advice! I've got to do well on it if I'm going to keep up my GPA and have a shot at getting into a really good graduate school!"

This girl really had to lighten up, thought Gibson. "I tell you what," he said teasingly. "If you want an A in my class, just wear a shorter skirt than you've got on now to the final--and sit in the front row. You'll feel so good about yourself that I'm sure you'll do fine."

"Professor Gibson!" exclaimed Genevieve. "I can't believe you said that to me! Would you talk to a white girl that way?"

"Only if she looked as good as you do," he said laughing as he ushered her out of his office and closed his door behind him.

As she watched Professor Gibson stride down the hall on his way to his meeting, Genevieve made three decisions. First, she would wear pants to the final. Second, she would sit in the back row during it. And third, since she was carrying a felt tip marker in her purse, she would pay a visit to the first women's lavatory she could find.

Chapter 8

When several political science professors suddenly walked past her open door on the way either to class or a long-delayed lunch, Ruth Silverstein could tell that this year's departmental promotion and tenure meeting had finally ended. This meeting was always held in November during those years that the department had promotion and tenure cases to consider. The meeting was open only to departmental faculty who already had tenure--but not to the chair of the department.

After this meeting, a professor designated during it would draft a memo stating what the vote on the candidate had been and summarizing the discussion held. A second meeting would then be held a week later to review the draft and propose any modifications. This second meeting, though, was usually less well attended as the draft memo was available several days ahead of time for the faculty to review and informally suggest changes to its author--something most professors preferred to do privately rather than in front of others. After being revised by its author (without any further recourse to the rest of the department), this memo would be placed in the candidate's dossier, which already contained both the material he or she submitted as well as letters received from external reviewers. Unlike these outside letters which the candidate wasn't supposed to see, he or she would receive a copy of the memo written at this and all subsequent stages of the review process--the next step in which would be the memo from the department chair. The chair would also receive copies of the memos about the candidate generated at later stages.

As Ruth knew, the memo from the chair would have the greatest impact if the vote of the faculty was divided. In other words, if the faculty unanimously supported a candidate for promotion and tenure, a chair who recommended against this would be seen as out of touch with his or her department at later stages in the process. Similarly, if the faculty voted heavily against a candidate, a chair's positive recommendation would probably not do much good. It was when the tenured faculty was divided on a candidate that the chair's recommendation--whether positive or negative--was most likely to carry crucial weight later on.

As Ruth anticipated, it was Trond Knutsen who came into her office and closed the door behind him. He looked exhausted; it was clear that the meeting had been difficult.

"Our colleagues decided to punish me for my past sins as chair by appointing me to write memos for both Barnes and Sweezy," he said, trying to sound jovial.

"I'm not surprised," said Ruth. "After all, you had a lot of practice at this when you were chair. So what happened? What was the vote?"

"The vote was the same for both of them," Trond informed her. "Thirteen for, two against, and one abstention."

"That's not good," Ruth observed. As she well knew, one vote against a candidate for tenure was usually not harmful. Two votes against, though, was considered evidence of the faculty being divided. And since an abstaining vote (as opposed to an absence from the meeting) was given the same weight as a no vote, this meant that both actually had received three negative votes--evidence that the faculty was seriously divided. "So tell me what was said."

"These two dossiers brought out all the divisions within the department--young vs. old, male vs. female, research vs. service, and political science vs. public administration."

Ruth shuddered. It was this last division that concerned her the most.

Trond continued: "Let me start with Ann. Those for her pointed to her record of service to the department. They argued that she had put in her dues, and that she was owed tenure. And while it wasn't said explicitly, it was clear that those who favored her most strongly were the female members of the department."

This didn't surprise Ruth. She knew from her own experience that being female and carrying a heavy service load usually went together.

"But those against her argued quite strongly that her research record was woefully insufficient, and that awarding her tenure would be an embarrassment to the department. At a time when other units in the university are raising their standards, our voting to give her tenure would signal that this department is not doing so."

Before becoming acting chair, Ruth had--like most professors--focused on her own department and was barely cognizant of what went on in others. Since attending the monthly meeting of College of Arts and Sciences department chairs, she had begun to perceive that there was a hierarchy among departments in terms of how favorably they were regarded by the dean's office as well as the central administration. And the Political Science Department, Ruth had come to realize, was not at the top of that hierarchy here at NDU.

What all departments always wanted from the dean and the central administration was new faculty positions. What had been brought home to her through her interaction with other chairs and the college dean, Dominic DiSola, was that new faculty positions did not necessarily go to departments with the largest enrollments, like political science. They tended to go instead to the departments that brought in the most grant money, such as psychology, economics, and those in the natural sciences. Indeed, the fact that these departments were bringing in ever larger grants was a testament to President Michaelson's policy of seeding them with the bright young professors who were now bringing them in; the older faculty--teachers, not researchers--had not done much of this.

Ruth remembered how Trond had constantly exhorted the political science faculty to aggressively seek research grants. Doing this, it had appeared to Ruth before becoming acting chair, was extremely difficult for a professor with a heavy teaching and service load who barely had time to work on her own individual, unsupported research. It was, she realized now, a vicious circle: the department would not be able to raise its status at the university without establishing a record of regularly winning major research grants, but it was unlikely to win such grants unless it could somehow raise its status and acquire the necessary resources from the dean and central administration that would allow it to acquire the additional bright young professors who were most likely to win these grants.

This, Ruth thought, was yet another reason why she was annoyed with Rob Barnes. Winning himself an individual fellowship to go up to Harvard last year had allowed the department to redeploy most of his salary (Trond and Dean DiSola, she had learned to her amazement, had allowed him to keep part of it), but did not bring in any funds, including the all important overhead which major research grants came with, to the department or the university. Rob was someone who could--was in fact, she remembered, hired with the expectation that he would--bring in research grants. His winning an individual fellowship which benefited him personally but not the department or university was just one more sign of his unwillingness to be a team player.

"The fear was expressed," Trond continued, "that a strong vote from our department for a marginal candidate would be reversed by the college P&T committee. Instead of helping Ann, we would only be worsening our own reputation.

This was a consideration. Since becoming acting chair, Ruth had learned that while political science was not considered to be one of the best departments in the college, it was not considered to be one of the worst either. The departments which tended to get little or no additional resources were low enrollment ones like philosophy, religion, sociology, and geography, or worse still, high enrollment but low research productivity ones like foreign languages and communications. These last two departments in particular had a reputation for awarding tenure to time servers--and for having their decisions reversed at the college level. Ruth realized that it was crucial that the Political Science Department not let itself fall into this category.

"I think Ann would have gotten fewer votes than she did," said Trond, "except that the public administrators in the department were afraid that if she didn't get tenure, the department would eventually lose her position to the new Public Policy Institute."

This, Ruth knew, was a possibility to be taken seriously. No department had a rock solid claim to a faculty position once it was vacated. The dean could reallocate it to another department. Far more likely in this case, though, was the prospect that the provost could take the position away from the College of Arts and Sciences altogether and give it to the new Public Policy Institute that was being formed.

"By the way," asked Trond, "have you been able to learn anything more about how the search for the institute directorship is going?"

Ruth shook her head. "Ever since the provost decided that the initial screening should be done by an outside headhunting firm instead of the search committee, there's been no news. I heard that even the members of the search committee are not being shown the list of applicants until the headhunters present them with a short list of ten."

This had never been done before at NDU. Up to now, search committees for high academic administrative positions (deans, their equivalent, and above) had been carried out solely by search committees. Although supposed to conduct their business in private, information about who all had applied for whatever position was being filled had always leaked out. Individual professors would then lobby committee members they knew either for or against particular candidates. News of what was happening would sometimes reach some of the candidates themselves, who would then actively--and usually unsuccessfully--lobby the committee too. Creating a short list of ten from a hundred or more candidates was difficult enough by itself, but doing so in such a public manner made it more so. By entrusting this task to an outside search firm, the provost ensured that the short list of candidates for the institute directorship would definitely be conducted in secret.

"I also heard," she continued, "that after the search committee narrows the short list down to the four or five who will be interviewed, the names of those coming to campus won't be released until the day before each one actually arrives." What this meant was not only would there be no opportunity for any of the faculty to lobby to include someone on the short list, but there would be no time for anyone not on the committee to bump a candidate off the short list before being interviewed either. Since this new institute was likely to impinge more on her department's turf than any other, Ruth regretted more than ever that the Political Science Department had not managed to get one of its faculty members onto the search committee for this position.

"Rob's strengths and weaknesses were assessed rather differently," said Trond. "Those for him emphasized his stellar research record. His teaching evaluations also show that he is popular with the students--as do Ann's, I should note. On the negative side, there was some complaint about his going up early and not having all that strong a service record, but these weren't considered serious problems by the majority."

Ruth understood that Trond was one of Rob's supporters, as were virtually all the men in the department. Many of them, of course, had published little but served the department and the university much before getting tenure in their sixth year. Ruth thought it strange that they--unlike the women in the department with similar records--did not seem to resent Rob for going up early without having performed much service. But since there were only three women in the department besides herself who had tenure (undoubtedly the source of the two no votes and the abstention that he received), Ruth knew that what the department's tenured females as a group thought about Rob mattered little in this process. But what she as chair thought about him, she knew, would matter much in it.

"As you might imagine," Trond continued, "those most opposed to Rob focused on this statement about him that was printed in the student newspaper--`Prof. Barnes touched me inappropriately.' And on this, Ruth, the faculty divided strictly on male-female lines. The men argued--quite heatedly--that such a statement written in a lavatory stall was meaningless. Just because such a statement was written there doesn't make it true. Indeed, statements written in lavatory stalls, by their very nature, must be considered suspect. The three women in the meeting, by contrast, argued just as heatedly that no woman would write such a thing if it was not true--or, at least, if she did not believe it was true. They thought that since Rob was going up early anyway, he should withdraw his application for promotion and tenure until this matter could be investigated and cleared up. That, of course, was a ridiculous suggestion."

"Was it?" asked Ruth.

"Of course it was," said Trond, obviously irritated. "Look, I've spoken to Rob at length about this matter. He told me that nobody has notified him about any sort of complaint being filed against him. He said he's had absolutely no problem with any of his students and that he has no idea who would have written anything like this about him in a lavatory stall or anywhere else."

"But wouldn't he say that even if--especially if--he did touch some girl `inappropriately?'" Ruth inquired.

"Rob says he cannot think of any incident that could have remotely inspired any student to write such a statement about him. He thinks the whole think is some sort of malicious prank perpetrated by someone who wants to derail his tenure application."

"That seems a little farfetched," commented Ruth. "I doubt if any of the students even know he's going up for tenure." She realized that just as Trond had revealed his support for Rob, Ruth was revealing her lack of it for him. "I suppose I could try to find out whether a complaint has been filed against him. The trouble, though, is that it could have been done at any of a dozen different offices--the NDU police, the dean's office, the Sexual Assault Services Office, the Minority Student Affairs Office, or several other places."

Trond looked increasingly annoyed. "Even if a complaint has been filed," he said, "that information is confidential. If a negative finding is made in the case of a faculty member, it is referred to the provost who is responsible for deciding upon any disciplinary action."

"Oh, so the chair is not automatically notified if a complaint against someone in her department has been filed?" she asked.

"No," said Trond. "The only way you would know is if the faculty member informed you--or if the complaint was made to you in the first place."

Ruth was relieved that nobody had filed a complaint about anyone in the department with her--yet. It would obviously be a nuisance to have to deal with.

"Some of these offices are so byzantine," Trond continued, "that they might not even inform the person accused that a complaint about him or her has been filed for months--if at all."

"So a complaint could have been filed against Rob without my knowing it," observed Ruth. "You know what bothers me most about Rob's case? It would be one thing if a sexual assault charge had been filed against him and I didn't know about it--or even if I did but it was kept confidential. Because of this damned `unwanted' poster, though, the whole thing is so public. If we recommend him for tenure, we'll be sending a message that we're not concerned about whether he gropes the girls here. It really would be better if he withdrew his application and submitted it again next year after everything has either been cleared up or forgotten."

"He's not going to do that, Ruth."

"Well, then, it will be his own fault if he's turned down as a result."

Trond sat back in his chair. "I can tell you this," he said. "The memo from the tenured faculty in the department that I am writing will make no reference to any anonymous, unsubstantiated charge made against Rob either in a woman's lavatory or the student newspaper. The memo from the faculty will be based on the material in his dossier alone. If you, in your memo, should choose to cite such a charge as a reason to turn Rob down for tenure, you will be leaving yourself open to a lawsuit from Rob later if he is denied tenure."

Ruth wondered: Was this a threat?

"And if and when the time comes at the end of the academic year for the dean to decide whether or not an acting chair should be confirmed for a full four year term," he continued, "I sincerely doubt that he would look favorably on her if she were facing a lawsuit filed against her by someone with an absolutely stellar dossier but whom she recommended not receive tenure on the basis of an anonymous, unsubstantiated complaint."

Yes, Ruth realized, this was definitely a threat. "Thank you for your report about the meeting, Trond," she said in an icy voice. "I will expect to receive your two memos after the meeting next week. That will be all for now." Looking surprised, he immediately got up and left.

The problem with Trond, Ruth decided, was that he didn't seem to understand that he was no longer chair of this department.

Chapter 7

Ann Sweezy knew she had to contain her enthusiasm somewhat, to try to appear objective, detached. She didn't want, Kate Morgan, the Washington Post reporter who had come to interview her, to see just how much she was loving this situation. And, Ann knew, she had to be a little bit careful about what she said. She was, after all, going up for tenure this year. But now that Robert Barnes had been "outed" in the second "unwanted" poster, she felt much more confident about her own prospects for success. For surely now Barnes would be forced to postpone going up for tenure--perhaps even resign from the university altogether.

Ann, for one, would not be sorry to see him go. He was an arrogant bastard. His disgustingly prodigious output of research publications made others in the department, including Ann, look bad in comparison. He was only able to accomplish this, Ann was convinced, through not doing his share of service work for the department like Ann did. A female professor like Ann would never have been allowed to get away with something like this. He had never even thanked her for taking on his advisees last year when he was at Harvard. Ann doubted that he was even aware that the previous chair, Trond Knutsen, had asked her to do this. Thank God he wasn't chair anymore! Being a woman too, Ruth was far more sympathetic to Ann's plight.

But ever since the appearance of the second "unwanted" poster, Ann gloated to herself, Robert Barnes had lost a little of his overweening self-confidence. It was Ann who had made sure that he saw it first. Having learned of its forthcoming appearance a day in advance from Tricia Raditz, Ann had come to campus early the next day and scooped up half a dozen copies of The New Dominion. She then went to her office and carefully clipped the back page off of each issue. Making sure nobody else was in the hallway, she quickly taped one of the "unwanted" posters right on Barnes's door. An hour later, she saw him walk past her open door (without, of course, saying so much as "hello" to her). She had gotten up and pretended to be working at her filing cabinet in order to watch what happened next.

When he reached his door, she saw him pause and then heard him say, "Good Lord! I can't believe this!" This second "unwanted" poster looked basically the same as the first one had, but there was only one item on it: "Prof. Barnes touched me inappropriately." Barnes had quickly ripped down the "unwanted" poster and brought it into his office. Ann had hardly been able to contain her elation! Each time she went out of her office that day, she made sure she picked up one or two more copies of The New Dominion. Since then, Ann had come in early every morning--even on days she didn't teach--and taped up a fresh copy of the "unwanted" poster on Barnes's door if one was not there. Barnes, of course, ripped them down on the days he came in to teach. But what Ann thought was particularly revealing about departmental sentiment was that nobody--not even the male professors--tore down the "unwanted" poster from his door on the days that Barnes didn't come in. Clearly, Ann deduced, support for Barnes within the department was weak!

"As I said on the phone," Kate Morgan began as she settled into the one guest chair (orange plastic) in Ann's office, "I wanted to talk to someone who taught women's studies here about this whole sexual assault graffiti business. Why do you suppose it's coming to light now? I mean, I know this `unwanted' poster phenomenon has publicized the graffiti. But the posters could only do so if the graffiti was there first to be publicized--unless, of course, the kids running the campus paper have just made the whole thing up."

"Oh, they couldn't have done that!" Ann quickly interjected. "As your own article in the Post reported, two very real sexual assailants who were tormenting two very real victims came to light as a result of the first `unwanted' poster. The New Dominion staff certainly didn't make that up!"

"No, what I meant to ask," Kate continued, "is whether this sort of graffiti has appeared before and just not been publicized, or whether its appearance is something new altogether. You've been teaching here several years now. Have you ever seen this sort of graffiti in the women's bathrooms before?"

Ann had not--aside, of course, from the typically non-specific graffiti identifying this or that particular male as a dickhead, shit-for-brains, motherfucker, or--most frequently--asshole. These complaints, however, did not detail specific charges of sexual assault. Nor, in fact, had Ann seen any of this more serious type of graffiti recently either. Maybe she was going to the wrong bathrooms.

"I would say that this sort of sexual assault graffiti has existed all along," Ann pronounced anyway. "This is the first year, though, that we've had a militant feminist as editor-in-chief of the campus newspaper. It's thanks to her that these cries of pain from assaulted women are finally being heard."

Kate nodded her head thoughtfully at this. "Yes, well--I suppose it's not the sort of thing that a male editor would have been in a position to notice, in that this graffiti only seems to appear in women's bathrooms."

Ann frowned somewhat. This comment seemed beside the point. "But it would have been visible to the paper's female reporters." Ann paused a moment to improvise. "Either they reported it to male editors in the past who refused to do anything about it, or they didn't bother to report it since they knew the males wouldn't care." That must have been what happened, Ann thought.

Kate nodded her head again. "Yes, it would have been visible to the paper's female reporters--and presumably to any other female, if she went to the right toilet. But I have yet to find anyone who remembers seeing graffiti like this in the past. And except for some of the women at The New Dominion I spoke to, I haven't found anyone else who has seen it this year either."

Ann was becoming a little annoyed. "So you really do seem to think that they made it up themselves?" she asked accusingly.

"Not at all," Kate assured her. "As you said, publicizing the graffiti uncovered a rapist and a stalker. And I'm positive that their victims--Irene and Victoria--had no connection with the student paper whatsoever. They knew nobody there even casually, much less somebody well enough to confide in who would have written the graffiti for them."

Ann was puzzled. "Why do you say that? Surely these two women wrote those messages themselves."

"I don't think so," said Kate. "They were identified in The New Dominion after Smith and Garcia were arrested, so I was able to interview them for my story in the Post. Both of them told me their sad histories with these two jerks, but both of them completely denied having written the graffiti which was published in the `unwanted' poster."

"So what are you saying?" asked Ann.

"I'm not saying anything," said Kate. "I'm trying to figure out what is happening here. That's why I came to talk to you."

"Well," said Ann, "I have never spoken to those two young women--Irene and Victoria. Since you have, you know more about them than I do. Maybe when you interviewed them they were too distraught to remember precisely what happened. Maybe they wrote out those messages unconsciously." Yes, that could be the explanation.

Now Kate looked puzzled. "Maybe," she said. After a moment she continued, "Why do you suppose The New Dominion published the graffiti in this `unwanted' poster format? Why not just publish them in the body of a news story, or just in a simple box by themselves with a brief explanation?"

Ann couldn't help but swell with pride. "Well actually," she admitted, "that was my idea."

"Oho!" said Kate conspiratorially, "I thought maybe you knew more about this than you let on!"

Ann smiled broadly. She knew she shouldn't be indiscreet, but this was just too delicious to let pass. Besides, she wanted Kate Morgan to regard her as a reliable source and come back to her in the future for information about what was really happening at NDU. "Is this off the record?" she asked coyly.

"If that's what you want, of course," Kate responded.

"Well, when Tricia Raditz first told me that she planned to publish a regular feature publicizing sexual assault graffiti, I was the one who suggested the `unwanted' poster format!"

"How creative!" observed Kate. "Have you ever thought of writing fiction?"

"As a matter of fact," Ann responded, "I do have this idea for a feminist novel. I can show you the outline if you like."

"Well, maybe we can talk about that some other time," said Kate. "Right now, I'm wondering if you can shed any light on this business with Robert Barnes--`Prof. Barnes touched me inappropriately,' I think the message said."

"That arrogant bastard!" Ann said emotionally. "You would not believe what a total, pompous jerk he is!"

"You don't seem to like him, Ann," Kate observed, concern in her voice.

"No I don't!" Ann replied. She then related the whole story about how she was forced to do so much service work in the department that she had little time for research while he had been allowed to do his research without doing any service, how this all came about under the previous sexist male chair of the department, and how unfair it all was. But this time, Ann was a little more discreet: she didn't mention how the two of them were going up for tenure this year.

"No, that doesn't sound fair," Kate commented. "But aside from that, do you really think he's the type who would touch his female students `inappropriately?'"

"Aren't all men that type?" Ann shot back. "I'm sure I don't have to tell you what male professors must be thinking when they see these young girls who wear next to nothing in their classrooms and in their offices."

"Yes, yes, no doubt you're right," said Kate. "But thinking about their female students is one thing. Actually touching them is quite another. Do you think Barnes is really the type who would touch any of them?"

"I certainly have no reason to think that he wouldn't touch them if he thought he had the opportunity," responded Ann.

"I'm not so sure," observed Kate.

Ann was beginning to wonder just whose side this woman was on. "Why on earth do you say that?" she asked.

"Well, as long as this conversation is off the record, I'll tell you," Kate said, sitting forward in her chair. "You know, I don't exactly wear a badge stating that I'm a reporter. And sometimes, if I happen to fall into conversation with someone, I don't even mention that I am.

"The other day, I was passing through this hall. I saw Robert Barnes was in his office, so I asked if I could speak to him. It just so happens that I was wearing something of a short skirt then," she said, indicating a point on her thigh significantly higher up than the hemline of the skirt she was now wearing. "The sweater I had on didn't exactly hide how I look either.

"When I went inside his office, I closed the door behind me. The poor man went into a panic! He immediately jumped up and opened it again, saying something about how he was looking out for someone who might pass by. We talked for about ten minutes. He never touched me once--inappropriately or otherwise. In fact, he sat as far away from me as he possibly could the entire time. He didn't even tell me if he thought I looked nice. He certainly didn't do anything for my ego that day! However true the graffiti items published in the first `unwanted' poster may have been, I think the one in the second poster about Robert Barnes was either a mistake or a lie."

Ann shook her head in disbelief. "The `unwanted' poster must have put him on his guard. Besides, it's my understanding that his door was closed when he inappropriately touched a female student."

Kate's eyes opened wide. "My, you do seem to know a lot about this, Ann," she said, sitting back in her chair.

Ann realized that she had been indiscreet, but she didn't want this reporter casting doubt on the veracity of the `unwanted' posters--this second one in particular. Letting Kate know what was really going on involved some risk, but it was also a golden opportunity to really discredit Barnes. In fact, if the story got into the Post, Barnes would probably have to resign at once, in total disgrace! Ann decided to show her the paper Tiffany Rodriguez had written for her Experiential Learning in Women's Studies practicum detailing what Cindy McMann had told her about Robert Barnes and their meeting with Ellen Stenkovsky of SASO. "I can't let you keep this," Ann said as she got the paper out from the top drawer of her desk, "but I can let you look at it here."

"Thanks," said Kate, taking the paper and reading through it quickly. There was one section in particular she turned back to. "It says here that he touched this girl's shoulder." Kate looked up at Ann. "Not a breast or even a thigh. This doesn't exactly sound like sexual assault to me."

"It was her bare shoulder that he touched," Ann pointed out. What was wrong with this woman? "All the elements of what we call a quid pro quo case were present: they were alone in his office with the door closed discussing her grade--which he exercises power over--when he first humiliated her and then touched her suggestively. As the paper says, he was clearly signaling her that he would raise her grade in exchange for sex."

"`Prof. Barnes touched me inappropriately,'" Kate repeated. "I suppose that refers to this incident with," she glanced at the paper, "Cindy McMann."

"I'm sure it does!" said Kate.

"But do you know for sure? Did Cindy tell you that she wrote that graffiti message in the woman’s bathroom?"

"No," responded Ann. "But I don't know what else that graffiti message could have been referring to--unless there's another female student Barnes assaulted!" If this was true, Ann hoped this second student would step forward and file a formal complaint. Then Barnes would really be history!

"Let's assume that the message in the bathroom does refer to Cindy McMann," said Kate. "Either Cindy wrote the graffiti herself--or someone wrote it for her."

"I don't think the latter happened," observed Ann.

"Why not? It appears that someone did this for Irene and Veronica. Why not for Cindy too?"

"Who would do such a thing?"

"How about you, Ann?" Kate asked, looking straight into her eyes. "You don't seem to like Robert Barnes much."

"I did no such thing!" Ann replied hotly. "You are going too far! What are you trying to prove?"

Kate raised her hands above her head, as if in surrender. "I'm sorry!" she said. "But a reporter has to think about all possible angles." She lowered her hands back down. "I doubt that it would be possible to prove that anyone in particular wrote that graffiti anyway.

"Another possibility, though," Kate continued, "is that this could be a case of mistaken identity. I understand there is another Professor Barnes here at NDU--in the biology department."

"That would be Jenny Barnes, the environmental policy specialist," said Ann, shaking her head. "I don't think so! Women just don't behave that way. Besides, we have Tiffany's paper indicating that it was Robert Barnes who touched someone inappropriately. I have no doubt that the graffiti refers to him."

"You're probably right," said Kate. "Still, the possibility of mistaken identity should not be discounted. Do you remember that one graffiti item that appeared in the first `unwanted' poster--`Charles Truehart fondled me?'"

"Yes?"

"The article appearing in The New Dominion about the reaction to that first poster interviewed a student named Charles Truehart who denied having done any such thing."

"That's what you would expect from someone like that, though, isn't it?" Ann asked smugly. She knew men.

"He might have been telling the truth," continued Kate. "I looked through the NDU phone directory afterward. It turns out that there's another Charles Truehart here--a food service manager, apparently. Maybe the graffiti was actually talking about him, not the student with the same name."

"I didn't know there was anyone on the staff by that name," said Ann. Like most members of the faculty, she did not know the names of more than a handful of the non-academic staff besides those in her department's main office. And except for Ellen Stenkovsky, she didn't consider any of them to be worth knowing. She made a mental note to say something to Tricia Raditz about there being another Charles Truehart on campus.

Kate looked at her watch. "I've really got to be going," she said. "This has been a most interesting conversation."

"Thanks for coming by. So tell me? Are you going to write a story about this Robert Barnes business?" asked Ann hopefully.

"I don't think I can," responded Ann. "What Brian and Oscar did to Irene and Victoria was news. They committed criminal acts, and they were arrested. The only thing I have on Robert Barnes is that he touched some girl--sorry, woman--on the shoulder. Neither Cindy nor the graffiti author said that he explicitly asked her for sex, or that he got any."

"But..." Ann began to protest.

"I'm sorry," Kate interrupted, handing Tiffany's paper back to her. "This might make exciting reading here at the university, but what actually happened--if anything--seems pretty obscure to me. Everything I write has to compete with dozens of hard stories--murders, rapes, robberies--for space in the paper. Not even all these make it in. What little I have here about Robert Barnes would never make it past my editor--who, by the way, is also a woman. I'm afraid that this story is going to have to `await further developments,' as we say, if it is ever going to make it into the paper.

"Can I call you if I hear of anything?" asked Ann.

"Of course," Kate replied. She reached inside her handbag and retrieved one of her business cards for Ann. "The number's on here, but since I'm often away from my office, just leave a message on my voice mail—-or send me an e-mail."

"Okay," said Ann. "And here's my card in return."

Both then stood up, shook hands, and said good-bye. “I should have told her that Barnes is going up for tenure this year,” Ann said to herself after Kate had left.

Chapter 6

Ellen Stenkovsky, the director of the Sexual Assault Services Office (or SASO, as insiders called it), was sitting on a toilet, with her pants and panties down around her ankles, in the woman's lavatory on the third floor of the Student Union Building. This, however, was just for cover in case anyone came in while she was there. It was ironic, Ellen thought, that it was sometimes necessary for her to bare her ass in order to cover it. For Ellen had not come there to use the toilet. She had come there instead to further the revolution--the women's revolution. And the weapon she would use to do this, as she had before, was the black felt tipped marker she was holding in her right hand.

There were plenty of women here at NDU who were women's rights activists. But they were not revolutionaries. In comparing the women's movement at the dawn of the twenty-first century to the socialist movement at the beginning of the twentieth, as Ellen was fond of doing, she saw most of the women's rights activists of today as being the equivalent of yesterday's social democrats. These people believed what they were doing was revolutionary, but they were really only reformists who worked within the established system. Yet how much progress could women make if they played by the rules set by reactionary males to perpetuate their own patriarchy? Not much, Ellen knew, especially when so many women sold out to the patriarchy by accepting positions of authority within it.

Ellen, though, could see through this: most of these positions possessed very little real authority. But by gratifying the egos of those women chosen to fill them, the patriarchy usually succeeded in turning them into defenders of the status quo system which had promoted them. And those few women who filled positions that really were powerful were chosen primarily for their willingness to keep other women in subjugation.

Unlike these social democrats of the women's movement, Ellen was the equivalent of a Leninist--a true revolutionary who knew that no real progress for women could be made just playing by the rules of the patriarchal system. Whatever space allowed to women by the patriarchy, of course, had to be exploited to the maximum. But there was no reason for a true revolutionary to allow the patriarchy's rules--which were illegitimate anyway--to limit her activity. It was obvious to Ellen, if not to the mere social democrats of the women's movement, that if the patriarchy maintained its dominance over women by means of the rules it had established, then the revolution was going to have to smash those rules in order to end its dominance. And that is exactly what Ellen was doing there in that stall in the women's lavatory.

But like a good Leninist, Ellen was a realist. She knew that there were limits on what the women's revolutionary movement could accomplish at present. There was no question of actually seizing control of the state, as Lenin and the Bolsheviks had done. This, however, was where she parted company with Lenin--who, no matter what he accomplished as a revolutionary, had still been a male. It was not necessary for the women's revolution to succeed by seizing control of the state in the violent, messy sort of revolution that men typically perpetrated. For in addition to everything else, the women's revolution embodied a revolution in how to make revolution! It would occur through women seizing the initiative in gender discourse, through ignoring the rules the patriarchy had established to maintain its dominance, and by creating a new matriarchal order--situation by situation, institution by institution--until one day women would control everything in the world that was worth controlling.

Ellen's battlefield was NDU. Like everywhere else, the women's revolution at NDU faced three obstacles: 1) an entrenched patriarchy--headed here by President Michaelson; 2) co-opted women who helped prop it up--such as Ruth Silverman, the chair of the Political Science Department; and 3) ineffective, play-by-the-rules, "social democrat" type women's activists--such as Ann Sweezy. Then there were women, such as Provost Jeannette Bobier (who was in charge of, among many other things, the Sexual Assault Services Office which Ellen directed) who switched back and forth between being a women's rights activist (though only, of course, of the play-by-the-rules variety) challenging the patriarchy on the one hand and defending it on the other, as her own personal career interests dictated.

Ellen was not sure what to make of the provost. It had been Bobier, after all, who had chosen Ellen, out of many applicants, to become director of SASO. But the provost was, Ellen knew, extremely stingy when it came time each year for her to allocate SASO's budget for the following year. Nor was the provost predictable when she reviewed appeals of decisions made on cases decided upon by the Sexual Assault Complaint Review Committee, which Ellen served as an ex officio member of. Sometimes Bobier upheld the committee's decision, but sometimes she overruled it. Ellen prided herself on being able to see through other people's little games, but she found the provost's to be impenetrable.

Ann Sweezy, Ellen smiled to herself, was a different sort of woman altogether. Ann was a "play-by-the-rules" women's activist, and not even a particularly effective one. But Ann actually thought of herself as a revolutionary! When she and Ellen had had lunch a few weeks ago, Ann had told her with such pride how Tricia Raditz of The New Dominion had told her she was thinking about a feature in which graffiti from women's lavatories at NDU "outing" sexual assailants would be published regularly in the paper now that she had become editor-in-chief. Ellen applauded Ann for allowing Tricia, who was extraordinarily busy with the paper, to undertake this activity (plus write a paper about the results of doing so) for her Experiential Learning in Women's Studies practicum which Tricia needed to do for the women's studies minor. Ann had taken special delight in relating to Ellen how she told Tricia that this was to be a "clandestine practicum"--something which was so sensitive that Tricia was not to reveal that she was getting academic credit for it.

How stupid Ann was! With Tricia publishing the "unwanted" poster on the back page of her paper, this was hardly a clandestine activity! All Ann really wanted was to keep her own involvement in the affair a secret. Yes, Ellen could easily see through her little game. But if Ann was blabbing about it to Ellen, she was probably blabbing about it to others too. Tricia, Ellen suspected, would in fact not say anything about this project receiving academic credit from Ann, but Ann's own big mouth might lead to her role in the affair coming to light.

All Ellen had said to Ann at the time was that she thought this was an excellent idea--one that was long overdue. Ellen had not told her that Tricia had actually discussed this idea with Ellen first. Further, Ellen had not told Ann, Tricia, or anyone else (nor would she ever tell them) that it was she, Ellen Stenkovsky, who had written the first two graffiti items which appeared in the "unwanted" poster: "Brian Smith is a rapist!" and "Oscar Garcia is stalking me!" In fact, she had done this in the exact self-same women's lavatory she was sitting in now. It was the perfect place to do this since the offices of The New Dominion were located on the same floor as SASO, and so this was the bathroom used by Tricia Raditz and other female staff members on the paper, and hence the one where they were most likely to read (as well as to, Ellen noted, frequently write surprisingly literate) graffiti.

If it were ever discovered that Ellen had written these messages, she knew, it would, at minimum, cost her her job. But just because doing this was against the patriarchy's rules did not make it wrong; in fact, it was absolutely the right thing for her to do. Nor was it in any sense dishonest. For Ellen had not made these messages up out of the blue. She had distilled them from two sexual assault cases filed last year with SASO that had not been resolved satisfactorily due to one of two problems that routinely plagued such cases.

In the first case--"Brian Smith raped me!"--the victim, Irene Pappas, had come to SASO only several months after being raped, as was typical in these cases. Irene primarily wanted counseling for herself as well as assistance persuading her professors to allow her to complete last fall's course work late (she had stopped coming to school altogether after it happened). Ellen had arranged these things for her, but while Irene admitted that she knew who her attacker was and that he had been her boyfriend, she refused to identify him either to Ellen or the NDU police. Ellen tried to persuade her to identify him since if she did not, he was likely to rape again. But as in so many such cases, Irene refused to tell--fearful, Ellen suspected, that her assailant would definitely attack her again if she did.

It had not been hard, though, for Ellen to identify him. She simply called Irene's mother, who readily told her that her daughter's relationship with one Brian Smith had turned sour a few months ago, though her daughter had not given her any details as to why.

In the second case--"Oscar Garcia is stalking me!"--the other recurrent problem was present: the young woman being victimized--Victoria Torres--had filed a complaint with the NDU police, but they could not or would not do much of anything for her. Here again, a young woman wanted to break off her relationship with a young man with a violent temper who (why were they all the same?) refused to let her go. Convinced that she was seeing someone else (which, of course, would have been her business and not his), he often waited in his car near her apartment and followed her to wherever she drove to. She tried speeding through yellow lights to get away from him, but he would just follow on the red afterward. And when she was at her apartment, she would receive harassing phone calls--often late at night--in which he would either shout at her abusively or say nothing.

Ellen had helped Victoria contact the police in every jurisdiction where this Oscar Garcia had stalked her, but they all indicated that there was little they could do unless and until he either attacked or forcibly obstructed her. Victoria had gotten an unlisted phone number to stop the harassing phone calls, but he had managed to get hold of it within days. In the meantime, Victoria was not getting enough sleep and her grades were suffering--all because, as far as Ellen was concerned, the ruling patriarchy condoned all but the most egregious forms of sexual assault.

In both cases, the "unwanted" poster had brought about positive results very quickly. Some students had apparently cut the back page from the paper and taped the poster on Smith's dorm room door. He, of course, tore it down, but the poster kept reappearing. Young women residing in the same dorm as Smith and their parents bombarded the university administration with phone calls demanding his immediate expulsion.

More importantly, the "unwanted" poster pushed Irene--as Ellen hoped it would--into filing charges against him preemptively for fear that Smith would assume that she had written the "Brian Smith is a rapist!" message in a lavatory stall. According to the story in the following week's New Dominion, his fellow students cheered when the police came and arrested him in his dorm shortly afterward. It was this public humiliation of a sexual assailant which Ellen particularly relished.

Since Oscar Garcia lived off campus, his neighbors did not know about the "unwanted" poster. Garcia's friends (apparently he had a few), though, did see it and pointed it out to him. Assuming that it was Victoria who had written the "Oscar Garcia is stalking me!" message, he became enraged and attacked her as she approached her car in her apartment parking lot. Oscar, though, had been so busy stalking Victoria that he did not even notice that half a dozen New Dominion reporters were stalking him. As the student paper later reported, the three male reporters in the group (males were good for something some of the time) rushed Oscar and subdued him while one of the female reporters summoned the police on her cell phone. Victoria had suffered several cuts and bruises. This might not have happened, Ellen knew, if the "unwanted" poster had not been published, but nor would Oscar Garcia's stalking have been halted either. As she had been told that Lenin had once said: "If you want to make an omelet, you've got to crack a few eggs!"

Ellen had heard from Tricia that President Michaelson and the university's legal affairs office had been very unhappy about the "unwanted" poster. Michaelson had even had one of his minions call the paper's faculty adviser to "suggest" that no further "unwanted" posters be published until the legality of doing so could be "clarified." But because of the posters overwhelming popularity on campus--especially among the women--and because the first one had resulted in the arrests of Smith and Garcia, the "central administration" (as it styled itself) backed off. In fact, in his comments appearing in The Washington Post's Metro section article about the two arrests and the role played by the "unwanted" poster in bringing them about, Michaelson implied that he had known about and approved of it in advance! What a shithead! Michaelson would do or say anything if he thought it would bring him good publicity.

Tricia Raditz, of course, was absolutely elated. She was determined to do more "unwanted" posters even if--indeed, especially if--the administration objected. Ellen was quite proud of herself for not succumbing to what she considered to be the petit bourgeois temptation to brag about her role in the affair. Ellen had told no one--absolutely no one--about what she had done.

Ellen wondered, though, whether Tricia suspected something. She had commented recently how strange it was that two of these sexual assault messages should be found in the same bathroom on the third floor of the Student Union Building--not a place that received a lot of foot traffic. Ellen had responded that she was not surprised. Since this was the floor where SASO was located, this was where women would come to file sexual assault complaints. If they had it in their minds to file such a complaint, then this would be a logical lavatory to write such graffiti in if they were going to do so anywhere. Besides, Ellen had asked her, did the female staff of The New Dominion visit every other woman’s lavatory on campus as often as they did the one near their office on the third floor of the Student Union Building? Perhaps they would find as much--or more--such graffiti in them. And now that the first "unwanted" poster was out, Ellen had told her, she suspected that many more women would write their complaints about sexual assault in women's lavatories all over campus.

Ellen had not written the third graffiti item that was published in the "unwanted" poster: "Charles Truehart fondled me!" Tricia or her reporters had found this instead--which was good. Publishing this other complaint had also gotten some results. Rumor had it that Charles Truehart was being shunned by the women in his classes, who either made a point of sitting far away from him, or if they couldn't, exaggeratedly crossing their arms in front of their breasts for protection whenever he appeared to be looking their way. His former girlfriend, Cindy McMann, had slapped his face when she first saw him after seeing the "unwanted" poster, but he had not filed any sort of complaint--he didn't dare! Truehart, though, was quoted in the next issue of The New Dominion stoutly denying the charge that he had fondled anyone. Ellen was quite confident, though, that he was not telling the truth since women, she believed fiercely, never lied about these matters. Still, whoever it was who had "outed" him had not yet come forward with a complaint. She had better, Ellen thought, if she didn't want it to happen again.

In the larger scheme, though, Ellen knew that these three guys--Smith, Garcia, and Truehart--were relatively unimportant. Students all, they were just pawns whom the patriarchy could easily sacrifice while remaining firmly entrenched itself. In order to really damage the patriarchy, it was necessary to strike at its upper ranks. And thanks to Tiffany Rodriguez bringing Cindy McMann into SASO to complain about Professor Robert Barnes, Ellen exulted that she was now in a position to do just this.

In one sense, what Barnes had done to Cindy was not as serious as anything that the three males featured in the "unwanted" poster had done: he had not raped her, stalked her, or even attempted to fondle her. Cindy had been clear on this last point--Barnes had touched her on the shoulder and nowhere else. In touching her, though, Barnes had done something that none of these other males had done to their victims. For unlike any of them, Prof. Barnes was in a position of authority, and thus his behavior vis-a-vis a student had to be held to a much higher standard than was expected of a male student vis-a-vis a female student.

And from what Cindy had told her (with frequent prompts and reminders from Tiffany), it seemed clear to Ellen that Barnes had not met that higher standard. The incident Cindy related possessed all the elements of a quid pro quo sexual harassment case: 1) they were in his office discussing her grade--the very thing that he exercised control over; 2) the door to his office was closed (Cindy couldn't remember which of them had closed it); and 3) after ridiculing her so much that she started crying, he then touched her shoulder and suggested that she could improve her grade after all. The clear implication of this, of course, was that he would raise her grade if she provided him with sexual favors.

Victims of sexual assault were usually distraught when they came to SASO, but Cindy seemed more distracted than usual. Instead of answering Ellen's questions about the incident with Professor Barnes, Cindy seemed intent on grilling Ellen for information on whether the person who had written "Charles Truehart fondled me!" had filed a complaint against him with SASO and who she might be. Although not strictly ethical, Ellen had finally told Cindy that nobody had filed a complaint against Charles as of yet just so Cindy would concentrate on describing the incident with Barnes.

Despite Ellen's and Tiffany's urging, Cindy had not been prepared to file a formal, written complaint at that meeting. As was her privilege, she had just made an informal, oral statement. As in previous quid pro quo sexual harassment cases where the student had only filed an informal--and hence, anonymous--complaint against a professor, Ellen advised Cindy not to go back to Barnes's office without first notifying SASO, but to attend all remaining classes in her course with him religiously. She should even try to learn to write analytically, as Barnes had suggested (Cindy appeared crestfallen at this, but Tiffany offered to give her some tutoring). Ellen explained that it was essential for her to do everything possible to get an "A" in his class legitimately. By doing this, it would be more difficult for him to discredit her complaint about receiving a low grade due to her refusal to comply with demands for sex with a claim that the low grade was due instead to lack of attendance and poor performance on assignments. Cindy had agreed and the meeting ended with Ellen admonishing her to report any further untoward behavior on the part of Professor Barnes to SASO immediately.

All this had taken place last week. But while Cindy was willing to wait until the end of the semester before pursuing the matter any further, Ellen was not. She had, of course, received complaints from students about unwanted sexual advances from professors in previous years. Many of these cases had been far more serious than Cindy's charges against Professor Barnes. It had been highly gratifying to Ellen that she had been able to help get some--though by no means all--of these jerks fired. Doing this, however, took a long, long time due to the patriarchal insistence on "due process" which discouraged female victims from filing or pursuing complaints against male professors who assailed them sexually.

Now, however, there was the "unwanted" poster which could be used to expedite such cases. And just as Ellen's "outing" of Smith and Garcia had resulted in their quickly being arrested, she calculated that "outing" Professor Barnes would force the central administration at the university to deal with his case far more quickly than it would through the ordinary complaint channels which the patriarchy obstructed through shrouding them in "confidentiality." Ellen saw through that little game! The patriarchy, though, could not protect one of its own so easily if a case received negative publicity.

What, though, should she write on Cindy's behalf? Ellen had at first thought of "Prof. Barnes fondled me," but this was too similar to what had been written about Charles Truehart. Nor was it quite accurate. She also considered writing, "Prof. Barnes hit on me," but this overstated what Cindy had actually said--Ellen was far too scrupulous to do this. But then, sitting there on the toilet, Ellen was inspired to write, "Prof. Barnes touched me inappropriately." This was indefinite, yet suggestive. Yes, this was perfect. It would definitely shake up the patriarchy--provided, of course, that Tricia or someone else from the paper saw it before the Spanish-speaking janitorial staff--being unable to distinguish serious from frivolous graffiti (in English anyway)--scrubbed it away.

* * *

Three hours later, Ellen was back in her office, waiting for the call from Tricia that had not yet come. It was six o'clock in the evening. Regular university offices were closed, but The New Dominion staff was just settling down to work. And so, she anxiously noted, was the janitorial staff that, a quick trip into the corridors of the third floor revealed, had just arrived off the elevator. Luckily, they had started at the opposite end of the floor.

Ellen did not want to be the one who brought any of these sexual assault graffiti items to Tricia's attention for fear that this would eventually result in her being suspected of being their author. Nor did she want to have to write the message again after the janitors washed away the original. She had no way of knowing whether anyone had seen what she had written yet, and she didn't want to risk anyone growing suspicious after seeing the same message appear again after being erased. There would be no reason for anyone to suspect Ellen in particular, but she didn't want any doubt to arise over the integrity of the sexual assault graffiti.

It was getting late. Ellen decided that she had better call Tricia and tell her she had just seen a new message in the women's lavatory when the phone rang. It was Tricia!

"Ellen!" said Tricia breathlessly. "I've been meaning to call you all afternoon! Did you see it? There's been another message in the women's room right here."

"You're kidding!" replied Ellen, feigning surprise.

"I'm not kidding," said Tricia. "And it's not about just some small fry student either. This time, we've caught a big fish professor!"

Chapter 5

Tiffany Rodriguez, dressed as usual in a long pair of jeans, t-shirt, and an unbuttoned long-sleeve flannel shirt, was sitting at her desk in her dorm looking through the latest issue of The New Dominion. She was, she knew, just postponing work on a problem that she hadn't yet figured out how to solve.

Tiffany was a senior majoring in Spanish and minoring in women's studies. She would have majored in women's studies, but there was no such major or department at NDU. The minor was known as an "interdisciplinary" one with courses and faculty drawn from several established departments. This was all the resources, Professor Ann Sweezy had told the students in the Introduction to Women's Studies class Tiffany had taken with her, which the patriarchy running the university would give to this emerging new field which it saw as a threat.

This semester, Tiffany was taking Professor Sweezy's upper division class on Current Issues in Women's Studies. This was going fine, which was not surprising: Tiffany was a serious--a very serious--student. The women's studies minor, though, also required students to enroll in an Experiential Learning in Women's Studies practicum. This was not a regular course per se, but was to be taken concurrently with a regular women's studies course. The student was required to become involved in a community- or campus-based service project which would enable the development of "competencies" in the women's studies field. A paper describing the project and what the student had learned from it was required for the practicum.

Tiffany had no problem writing papers. She was having trouble, though, identifying a project to work on related to the Current Issues in Women's Studies class. Tiffany had asked Professor Sweezy for ideas, but she refused to help, insisting that Tiffany come up with a project on her own. She had said that Tiffany was too academic and needed to become more practical. It was people with practical skills who would be the ones to advance women's causes.

Tiffany attributed Professor Sweezy's emphasis on practicality to her background in public administration. The problem for Tiffany, though, was time. She was already taking a full load of courses and working over twenty hours a week. She simply didn't have the time to serve as an unpaid volunteer for any university offices or community groups dealing with women's issues as several of the other students in the class were doing. Further, the Experiential Learning in Women's Studies practicum specifically excluded projects for which a student received payment. Being paid was allowed in the Internship in Women's Studies, but unlike the practicum which was required for the minor, internships were elective.

What Tiffany really wanted was to design a project that would benefit specific women--maybe even just one woman. She was a little skeptical about some of the projects that other women in the class (everyone in the class happened to be female) were working on which purported to help women in general, even if just in the community or on campus. Tiffany's academic nature led her to question whether volunteer work for a semester in an ongoing program would provide "added value" that would not accrue otherwise, and how this could be measured even if it did. She wanted to prove that she really was practical--more practical, in fact, than the other women in the class who were less academically sophisticated than Tiffany (surely Professor Sweezy could see this). Of course, she wasn't sure what the practicum projects were that all the other students in the class were doing. A few, like that overbearing Tricia Raditz who was in charge of The New Dominion, were being very secretive about theirs. That was not very sisterly.

Whatever they were doing, however, time was slipping away from Tiffany. Professor Sweezy told her after class today that she had to come up with something by next week or drop the practicum. But what?

Tiffany's thoughts were suddenly interrupted when her roommate, Cindy McMann, burst into the room. "That Barnes is a bastard!" she announced in a bitter voice. Cindy then threw herself onto her bed, sobbing.

Tiffany quickly got up from her chair and closed the door to their room. "Cindy, what happened?" she asked with concern.

Cindy picked herself up and sat cross-legged on her bed. Slightly calmer now, she launched into her story. "Remember the midterm I showed you on which he so unfairly gave me a B+?"

Tiffany went and sat on the edge of her own bed, nodding her head in acknowledgement.

"Well, I went to his office to confront him about it," Cindy continued, "and he just ridiculed me!"

"What did he say to you?" asked Tiffany, her eyes growing wide.

"Well, when I first told him that I wasn't satisfied with the grade he gave me, he just snapped back saying he wasn't satisfied with my exam. Then when I told him that you had read it over and that you said it was good, he just laughed at me and asked, `Who's the professor--her or me?'"

Tiffany wished Cindy had not mentioned her name to Professor Barnes. Yes, she had read Cindy's midterm over after it had been returned to her, and yes, she had said she thought it was good. But she had also emphasized that she thought Cindy should go talk to him and seek advice on how to improve her writing. Tiffany, in fact, saw the point of Professor Barnes's comment at the end of Cindy's exam calling for less description and more analysis. Tiffany had not said this herself to Cindy out of fear that they would get into an argument--as they had this past Sunday. Besides, Tiffany was not Cindy's professor; it was Barnes's job to give her guidance about her writing, not Tiffany's. But not through ridiculing her!

"He kept telling me," Cindy continued, "that I needed to write analytically, not descriptively. But instead of telling me clearly what `writing analytically' means, he just confused me--deliberately!"

"How do you mean?" asked Tiffany. She really was fond of Cindy. Cindy, of course, was not Tiffany's intellectual equal, and Cindy knew it. Tiffany realized that she wouldn't have liked her as much--indeed, not much at all--if Cindy hadn't known this. Cindy, though, seemed happy to look up to, seek advice from, and admire Tiffany in the intellectual realm--something that Tiffany found deeply satisfying. But Tiffany also admired Cindy. If left to her own devices, Tiffany knew that she would have little--if any--social life. Cindy, though, met people easily and attracted a stream of visitors to their room, some of whom Tiffany became friends with too. Tiffany knew that she would never have met them if Cindy had not been her roommate, and so Tiffany was grateful for her friendship. Nevertheless, Cindy's sociability was not always something positive as far as Tiffany was concerned. In fact, it had been the cause of their confrontation this past Sunday.

Cindy had a boyfriend. That didn't bother Tiffany, but what did was feeling pressured by Cindy to leave their room when he came to visit so that the two of them could be alone--obviously to have sex. This was not a situation Tiffany was used to. The woman she had roomed with during her first two years at NDU had not had a boyfriend; she and Tiffany would still be roommates except that she transferred to UVA. Tiffany's roommate last year did have a boyfriend, but she had always gone to visit him at his place; they were now living together.

The situation that arose with Cindy, then, was not one Tiffany had been prepared for. Each Saturday evening since the start of this school year, Tiffany had felt pressured to leave the room--sometimes quite late at night--when Cindy and her boyfriend had begun kissing on Cindy's bed. They had not actually asked her to leave. Indeed, they didn't even seem to be aware that she was still there. Each time, though, Tiffany had announced that she was going to the library and left--partly out of fear that they would copulate right there in front of her if she didn't. And each time she had been so angry at feeling pressured to leave her room when she hadn't wanted to that she couldn't do any studying, but just sat in the current periodicals section of the library looking through feminist journals. Each time there had also been the little problem of trying to calculate when it was safe to return. She tried to telephone, but Cindy had always turned her cell phone off, and so all Tiffany would get was her voice mail. This either meant that Cindy was still busy with her boyfriend and Tiffany should stay away, or that they had finished, Cindy was asleep, and Tiffany could go back.

Each time, Tiffany had returned to the dorm precisely after one hour, knocked softly on the door, and quietly re-entered their room when there was no answer. Luckily, the boyfriend had left and Cindy was asleep on each occasion. But then Tiffany felt annoyed because, after Cindy had inconvenienced her, she now felt she had to tiptoe around the room so as not to waken her. Tiffany's anger would then keep her lying awake for hours and would still be there the next morning, freshly aroused by Cindy waking up in an annoyingly happy mood.

Tiffany would never have done this to Cindy. Of course, Tiffany did not have--had never had or even felt the desire for--a boyfriend, and so was not in a position to do unto Cindy what Cindy had done unto her. It's not that she had ruled out having a boyfriend. But she certainly would never have one whom she considered to be her intellectual inferior. She had never met a male, though, who wasn't. Nor did males ever seem to recognize this deficiency in themselves--which, of course, was the most obvious proof of its existence.

In addition, Tiffany was frightened about the possibility of contracting AIDS. She recognized that males were so obsessed with sex that they would do anything--even risk contracting AIDS--to get it. She did not, though, understand how women could be--it had to be acknowledged--promiscuous. Tiffany had never felt such an overwhelming desire for sex that she would seek it no matter what the possible consequences. That was just not sensible. Such urges could and should be controlled.

Finally, she had too much studying and work to accomplish at this point in her life. A boyfriend--even one with progressive views--would at best be a distraction. What she really feared, though, was that a "boyfriend" would turn out to be a "boyenemy" and try to prevent her from accomplishing all the things she needed to accomplish. That's what men did to women. This had been demonstrated to her repeatedly both through the readings and lectures in her women's studies classes as well as her own personal observation. Why didn't Cindy seem to understand something as basic as this?

"At first he told me," said Cindy, "that he wanted me to tell him what I thought about Hobbes's theory of international relations. But later he said he didn't care what my opinion about Hobbes was."

The blowup had come on Sunday when Cindy's boyfriend (Tiffany could not--would not--remember his name) came back to their room. Tiffany was determined that she was not going to be forced out two days in a row. As the two of them began kissing on Cindy's bed, Tiffany continued to work on her computer at her desk. When after a few minutes Cindy asked if it wasn't time for her to go to the library, Tiffany had turned around and said, "I think it's high time you two went there--and maybe did some reading up about AIDS." Cindy and her boyfriend, obviously embarrassed, quickly got up and left the room.

Two hours later, Cindy returned alone, and the two of them had then exchanged angry words. Cindy had criticized Tiffany for not leaving the room earlier that day; Tiffany had said that pressuring her to leave the room on several occasions was far ruder. Cindy had accused Tiffany of being jealous of her for having a boyfriend, and of being too stiff to ever have one herself.

Cindy later apologized for having made Tiffany feel pressured to leave the room in the past (Cindy, much to Tiffany's amazement, said that she hadn't realized this bothered her), and promised that it wouldn't happen again. They agreed to put the episode behind them. Still, some of the things Cindy had said about her had stung.

"Oh, and you know what else he said?" Cindy continued. "He said that the view that women are inferior to men is just as valid as the view that women are equal to men. Can you believe that?"

Tiffany's eyes opened wider. Up to now, she thought that Cindy had been overreacting, even if Professor Barnes appeared to have been rude. But this was different. This was serious. It was an affront to all women. "I can't believe he'd say something that blatant!" commented Tiffany.

"And do you know what else he did?" asked Cindy. "He put his fucking hand on my shoulder! Can you believe that?"

Yes, Tiffany could believe it. It was a very pretty shoulder, especially bare like it was in the sleeveless top Cindy was wearing. "No!" exclaimed Tiffany. "He touched you like that? Was the door open?"

Cindy thought for a moment. "No, it was closed."

Tiffany knew that this was extremely serious--too serious not to do something about. "Cindy," she said solemnly, "that was a sexual assault. Professor Barnes assaulted you sexually."

Cindy looked puzzled. "I...I'm not sure..."

"Oh, come on, Cindy!" Tiffany interrupted. "A male professor touches a female student on the shoulder--on her bare shoulder--in his office with the door closed when she came to ask him to raise her midterm grade? That's a classic quid pro quo case."

"Quid pro quo?" asked Cindy.

Poor Cindy! She really wasn't very bright, thought Tiffany. But that's exactly why she needed to be protected. "You know: `You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours.' By touching your shoulder, he was signaling that he would change your grade---for a price."

"Yeah?" asked Cindy.

"Of course!" said Tiffany in exasperation. "What else?" She thought of something else. "What did you do when he touched you?"

"I...I got up and left," replied Cindy.

"Good for you!" Tiffany praised her. "But look, Cindy, this isn't over yet. You're still in his class. He might either make this little proposal again or he might retaliate against you for not giving him what he obviously wants. You've got to put a stop to him--not just for yourself, but for all women. Because you know that if he's done this to you, he's probably done it to other sisters too."

"Maybe I should file a complaint," said Cindy. She suddenly laughed. "I overheard him say that he is going up for tenure this year. I wouldn't mind doing something to mess that up for him!"

"So he's going up for tenure, is he? That's important to know," observed Tiffany. "It means we have some leverage over him. I know that once they get tenure, it's almost impossible to get rid of them no matter what they do. If something is going to be done about Barnes, it has to be done now."

"Perhaps I should say something to the chair of the Political Science Department, Dr. Silverstein," mused Cindy. "She's a woman! I had gone to her office to complain about Barnes just after leaving his office. She was in some meeting. I waited fifteen minutes until it was over, but then she ran out saying she couldn't talk to me because she was late for something else. I'll call her office now and make an appointment."

"Forget her!" Tiffany said emphatically. "Professor Sweezy told us in class that Silverstein had sold out to the patriarchy here long ago. Why else would the male powers-that-be let her become chair of the department? They put her there, Professor Sweezy told us, because she was willing to keep other women down."

Cindy laughed again. "I'm not surprised if the male powers-that-be don't consider her a threat, considering Silverstein looks more like a man than a woman," she said.

Tiffany frowned. She wished she could teach Cindy that for a woman to criticize another woman's appearance was neither progressive nor sisterly. Tiffany and Professor Sweezy, by contrast, had criticized Silverstein on principle, so that, of course, was different. But Tiffany decided not to take this up with Cindy just now: she had to go one step at a time with her.

"Let me show you something," said Tiffany who then got up from her bed, picked up the copy of The New Dominion from her desk, and sat next to Cindy with it on the other bed. "Have you seen this yet?" asked Tiffany, showing Cindy the inside back page of the paper. There was a quarter page ad that read, "Report sexual assault and other unwanted sexual behavior to the Sexual Assault Services Office" along with its room number in the Student Union Building, phone number, and e-mail address.

Cindy took the paper in her hands, giving the ad a cursory glance. She then closed the page over and looked at the very back page. "Hey, look at this!"

The outside back page was done up to look like a wanted poster from the days of the "Wild West." Instead of reading, "Wanted!" however, the banner headline at the top read, "UNWANTED!" In smaller type underneath appeared, "Sexual Predators at NDU Revealed!" And in smaller type still was printed, "The female staff of The New Dominion witnessed the following cries of pain written on the walls and the stalls of the women's lavatories at NDU."

And below this in quotation marks:

"Brian Smith is a rapist!"

"Oscar Garcia is stalking me!"

"Charles Truehart fondled me!"

At the bottom of the page was printed, "Don't tolerate unwanted sexual behavior! Out it!"

"I don't fucking believe it!" shouted Cindy.

"It's a sad comment on what women have to endure here," observed Tiffany. "You see, you're not alone."

"Did you see this about Charles Truehart?" asked Cindy.

"Is he someone you know?" asked Tiffany.

"Surely you haven't forgotten," said Cindy. "He's my boyfriend! But it looks like he's been hitting on someone else at the same time! God, men are all assholes!"

Tiffany was embarrassed. Yes, of course: that was his name. Secretly, though, she was glad that he had been "outed." Now Cindy would no longer be entertaining him in their dorm room.

"You know what I think?" asked Tiffany. "I think you should report this incident with Professor Barnes to the Sexual Assault Services Office. If you like, I can go over with you to lend moral support. Do you want me to call and make an appointment?"

Cindy nodded her head. While Tiffany talked on the phone, she just sat on her bed staring at the unwanted poster page. After putting the phone down, Tiffany came back over to where Cindy was sitting. "It's all set!" she said cheerfully. "You have an appointment next week!"

And, Tiffany thought, she herself finally had a project for her women's studies practicum, one that she knew Professor Sweezy would approve of: helping guide Cindy through this sexual assault crisis she was experiencing.