Nothing very exciting. Oh, I did have a nice meeting with Patricia Estavez.”
“I’ll bet. Tell me about it.”
Chapter 4
“The meeting will come to order,” I joked, striking my coffee cup with my spoon in lieu of banging a gavel. It was Saturday, the day after my visit to Crescent Heights College with Mark.
I was holding the meeting in my apartment at Silver Acres and the participants included Mark, Tess and Wesley. We sat at my small dining table, drinking coffee and eating carrot and celery sticks. Wesley’s health kick since his wife had died included an improved diet as well as exercise. Tess and I often ate dinner with him in the main dining room so we were influenced by his diet. Thus the veggies instead of gooey rolls or cookies.
King circled the room, placing her nose on one lap after another, begging to be scratched behind her ears. I should have chained her outside, but these people were all her friends and she enjoyed the attention.
I quickly outlined Mark’s predicament to Tess and Wesley. Then I had Mark tell about the meeting that had occurred between him and his accuser in his office. He told it the same way he had told it to me, almost word for word. Tess exclaimed, “I don’t believe it,” from time to time and Wesley got a very concerned look on his face.
After Tess and Wesley had been filled in on the facts, I said, “Our purpose here is to help Mark come up with a plan of action. We discussed getting him an attorney, but he can’t have an attorney present at his hearing and he can’t face or cross-examine his accuser so there doesn’t seem to be much point to him having one.”
“When is your hearing?” Wesley asked Mark.
“The exact date hasn’t been set yet,” Mark said, “but probably sometime next week. I gather that there is a separate hearing first for my accuser.”
“And who is present at these hearings?”
“A panel of about five people. One of them is Patricia Estavez, who Lillian met yesterday.”
“I don’t mean to sound negative,” I said, “but if she is the deciding vote your goose is cooked. And I suspect she leaked the information about you to the protestors to create a negative buzz. Presumably, that will make your firing easier for your students to accept.”
Mark grimaced in agreement.
“If the policy states that information about the case is confidential, the leak may be grounds for an appeal,” Wesley said.
“Except that an appeal is handled by basically the same group,” Mark said. “It’s called the adjudicating panel. In addition to Ms. Estavez, it also includes two deans and a faculty member, all specially trained in sensitivity to sexual misconduct.”
“Which apparently means sensitivity to women but not men,” I said.
“What kind of testimony can you give?” Wesley asked. He was a CPA and had been an accountant in the world of business, so he took a practical approach to problem solving.
“Basically, all I can do is tell my side of the story. That’s about it. There won’t be any witnesses because there weren’t any. As I said, I can’t question my accuser. She won’t be present when I am.”
“So it’s your word against hers,” Tess said. “I would believe you before some dippy girl.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence. Unfortunately, none of you can attend the meeting.”
“How about character witnesses?” I asked, remembering the girl from the Administration Building.
Mark shook his head. “I asked about that. I was told that I might produce a dozen witnesses and they would turn the proceeding into a farce.”
“I’m sure you can produce a hundred character witnesses, but the proceeding is a farce anyway,” Tess said. “And since it’s done in secret, it will be impossible to appeal or correct any bias, intentional or otherwise, on the part of the panel.”
Speaking of bias, it was obvious that we all had the same opinion. I should have invited Priscilla Estavez to give her side of the story. I felt I had a moral obligation to stand in for her. I said, “I understand that the reason for the policy is that students-meaning coeds-had previously found it difficult to file rape charges. They had to cut through a lot of red tape and the college officials tried to downplay problems.”
“But now they’ve swung the pendulum too far in the other direction,” Wesley said, “Out the window go due process and other protections our country is grounded on. Does the charge in your case include rape?”
“I don’t see how it could,” Mark said, “but Ms. Estavez implied that it did. I guess rape is as good as any other charge because I can’t understand how any charge could have been made. But the policy is worded so loosely that what actually happened might be used against me if my accuser had some kind of mental and/or physical impairment that I should have been aware of.”
“Such as having a crush on you?” I asked.
Mark shrugged. He wasn’t conscious of his attractiveness to women, which of course made him that much more attractive.
“All right, this is what we’re going to do,” Tess said. “We’re going to write a script for Mark to use when he testifies. Lillian, do you want to take notes? No, I’d better do it because my handwriting is better than that of anyone else here and I have experience because I acted as Lillian’s secretary when she solved Gerald’s murder.”
Tess produced a yellow pad and her glasses from her purse, which she put on, being careful not to disturb her perfectly coifed white hair. She had come prepared.
“In many enterprises, the secretary runs the company,” Wesley said, with a smile. “I’m sorry; I should have said administrative assistant. I understand that there aren’t any secretaries any more.”
“I may not have a lot of work experience, like the rest of you,” Tess continued, “but I was a member of my local school board and I ran into people like those who are likely to be on the panel. I had to deal with issues like school busing to achieve integration, so I understand the politics of victimhood.”
“Who are the victims here?” Mark asked.
“Isn’t it obvious? The women students. They are so fragile that they have to be protected from their tormentors and can’t even be in the same room with them. Now Mark, you’re going to tell what happened pretty much as we heard it, but you’re going to do it in a sensitive manner. For example, when you tell about pushing your accuser away you’re going to say that you were trying to protect her because you understood that she might have a crush on you that could affect her judgment.”
Although Tess had not held a job most of her life-her career had been that of a housewife-she had a truckload of common sense and she was a lot better at the sensitivity thing than I was. My advice to Mark might have been to tell everybody involved with the case to go to hell, which wouldn’t have gotten him anywhere except thrown out on his ear. Knowing my weakness, I was happy to let Tess take the lead.
As the others talked and Tess took notes, I thought about my next step. I needed a man to help me. Ordinarily, I would have asked Mark, but I had to disqualify him because he was the defendant. Wesley was too old. He didn’t drive much at night and he was too far removed in years from his youth to be able to think like a young man. I had only one logical choice-my son, Albert.
Chapter 5
Albert had some of the same flowers blossoming on his farm that I had seen at Crescent Heights College, including daffodils and forsythia. In addition, he had flowering quince, star magnolia, plum trees and some early roses. A warm spell at the end of February had followed a snowstorm and prompted the flowers to make their appearances, causing the earth to look and smell like spring. I hoped that the quick freezes we were subject to wouldn’t kill them all off.
The four generations of our family had a tradition of eating Sunday brunch at the farm. I brought baked goods while Albert and Sandra prepared the main meal. Sandra’s two-year-old son, Winston, brought his charming and inquisitive self.
