MILTON TOOK HIS usual route. In the last few days, the stone pathways had been transformed from their natural slate gray to an explosion of bright colors. On many campuses, “chalking,” as it was known, had become a vibrant means of political expression. Pathways at schools like Oberlin and Wesleyan had become veritable chalk tributaries. Officially, Devon had a policy against it, although Milton knew this stemmed from aesthetic concerns more than anything else. He wasn’t about to kick the hornet’s nest over some pink and orange chalk. Besides, important speech issues were involved. As he would remind anyone who listened, freedom of speech was one of Devon’s core principles. Chalking was just how the students were exercising theirs.
Sometimes, of course, Milton had to make a judgment call. People like Foster Jennison needed to understand the full picture. For instance, just recently the Devon Republican Club had invited that conservative provocateur to speak on campus, the one who believed transgenderism was a mental disorder. After multiple threats of violence Milton canceled the event. Safety of the students had to come first. And really, the man was crazy. Devon was not obligated to confer its prestige on crazy people.
The messages covering Mathers all concerned this girl, Harris. Milton walked over ones saying such things as
Devon stands with survivors
and
Lulu for President!
Also #Crawlpeace was chalked everywhere. Catchy, he thought.
Milton had a growing admiration for Lulu Harris. Last night, he’d worked late and watched the procession cross Bingham from his office window. There was a religiosity about it he found moving. He could feel the poor girl’s agony as she crawled along in tattered clothes. Clearly, she had suffered a great trauma and was striking a chord with the community. The crowd must have been three hundred strong, and they followed solemnly behind her, chanting sometimes. Minutes after he could no longer see them, he heard the tortured scream all the way from East Quad. It was haunting.
Milton knew all eyes would be on him to see how he dealt with this. What a crazy year it had been. Just when one problem died, another sprang up. How could something like this assault have happened at Devon? This was an enlightened institution! This professor, Russell, it was the second time this year he was in the thick of it. Well, all that would be taken care of soon enough. Lulu Harris clearly wasn’t making this up. No, that was impossible.
Inside Stockbridge, D’Arcy intercepted him before he could even enter his office. “Sir, Stillman Weathers is on the phone for you.”
Milton sighed. He fantasized how much easier life would be if he didn’t have to deal with a board. Or alums. “I’ll take it inside,” he said. Shutting the door, he traversed the vast space of his office and picked up the receiver. “Stillman! How are you?”
“Not happy, Milton. Not happy at all. I’m in the middle of closing a deal and I have to field an angry call from Foster Jennison. It seems he was watching one of the morning news shows today, and his beloved university is getting national exposure for what? A new scientific breakthrough? Nobel Prize winners? No, for some goddamn girl crawling around in ripped-up clothes because we apparently have a faculty full of rapists! Christ, Milton, we just finished putting out a fire and now this. What the hell kind of show are you running up there?”
Milton blanched. People from the outside had a directness he found regrettable. “I understand your concerns, Stillman, I do. But this girl is free to express herself.” Milton picked up a pile of his messages and started flipping through them.
“But this is the same goddamn professor as before, right? Just get rid of the sonuvabitch. Then the problem of the girl goes away.”
“He’s been suspended. There is a process we have to follow.” One of his messages jumped out. George Carrillo from the DA’s office. Please call re Ephraim Russell. “And it looks like the DA is now interested. I just got a message.”
“The DA? Shit. More publicity.”
“Well, that cat’s out of the bag, I’m afraid.”
“Yes, but the legal process is slow, and the publicity will drag on. Just fire his ass and then he’s not our problem anymore. Need I remind you that most of Foster’s gift for the new houses is still only a pledge? A pledge, as in, the money is not in the bank. And I can tell you the man is not happy.”
“I assure you, Stillman, this situation is my top priority.”
“I can only assume it is.” Stillman hung up, leaving Milton staring at the phone.
There was a quiet knock at the door.
“Yes, come.”
It was D’Arcy. “Sir, Dean Malik-Adams would like”—Martika marched in around D’Arcy before she could finish her sentence—“a word.”
“There’s something you and I need to talk about,” Martika said.
“Go a—”
“It’s the Russell situation. We need to immediately convene the Title IX Tribunal to deal with this.” Devon’s Title IX Department reported to Martika, as it happened.
“Yes, Stillman Weathers just called, the DA’s office, too.” Milton waved the message in the air. “You don’t think we should let the justice system take care of this? There is an alleged crime, after all.”
“Absolutely not.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“We don’t want them involved. This is a university matter.”
“But a crime may have been committed, Martika. He’s not tenured. We could just fire him and let the legal system deal with it. In fact, that’s what Stillman wants to do.”
“We can let the justice system have Russell later.”
“Why?”
“Failure to act expeditiously in a case like this—one that’s receiving national attention—could easily land us on the OCR watch list, and I think you know what happens then.…”
“The OCR…?”
“The Office of Civil Rights within the federal Department of Education.”
“Oh, right.” He’d forgotten the acronym. The OCR. The people who could turn off the federal spigot. How many research projects would he have to kill? All those angry professors …
“You remember what happened with Beta Psi a few years ago…”
He did indeed. “But isn’t firing him acting expeditiously? What’s more expeditious than that? Plus, he’s out of our hair.”
Martika sat down on the couch. “I can assure you that the OCR won’t see it that way. They will want a faster result than the criminal justice system can provide, and they are watching schools like ours to make sure we have the procedures in place to deliver those results.”
Milton looked confused, so Martika continued. “Let me put it this way. Title IX allows us more … latitude in how to conduct things. Title IX procedures, as laid out by the government itself, do not constrict us in the same ways as the criminal justice system.”
“So what you’re saying is that justice might be served more…”
“Expeditiously. We can find guilt with a preponderance of evidence—fifty point one percent—which is far more straightforward than the ‘beyond a reasonable doubt’ standard in courts. We can’t send this bastard to jail—hopefully that comes later—but we can deal with him here in our own way, quickly. If the DA gets involved, the whole thing gets bogged down in discovery motions and evidentiary procedures and whatnot, and then we might not be seen as justified in firing Russell until there’s a guilty verdict. If we keep things in-house, we can do things our way. Fairly, of course.”
“But this won’t impinge upon Professor Russell’s rights in any way, am I correct? I mean there’s due process, right?”
“There’s a process.”
“What does that mean?”
“Let me put it this way. Professor Russell will have the same rights as everyone else who gets accused of a Title IX violation.”
Milton considered his conversation with Stillman. A quick resolution was certainly desirable, and Milton did just get Martika’s assurance that Professor Russell would be treated fairly. “Of course, the Harris girl may file a complaint with the DA. Then I suppose it’s out of our hands…”
“Woman.”
“What?”
“Harris woman.”
“Yes, of course. The Harris woman.”
“She hasn’t filed a thing.”
“How do you know that?”
“I have a friend in the DA’s office, so I took the liberty of checking. She hasn’t filed. Right now, all that’s happening is that the DA sees all the publicity and is trying to horn in. This is a potentially high-profile case and it happens this is an election year. They are welcome to have Russell when we’re done here.”
Milton weighed the pros and cons. His first instinct in any situation was to be cooperative. In his experience, that was almost always the best course. On the other hand, he worried deeply about tangling with the OCR.
As for the Crawl, despite his personal feelings, he was starting to have misgivings there, too. What Lulu Harris was doing was admirable, but not everyone saw it as the creative exercise of free expression that it was. Foster Jennison certainly didn’t, and Milton hated to think how much work would be involved making up for Foster’s gift should things go south. It could be done—this was Devon—but it might have a knock-on effect to the capital campaign. The development office would scream bloody murder. No one, including Milton, liked asking for money, and ground had already broken on the new houses.
He decided to table the Crawl issue for now. Russell was the more exigent matter. “Very well. Convene the tribunal as soon as you can make it happen.”
That will be easy, thought Martika, since she was the tribunal’s sole member.
“I will talk to counsel and have them tell the DA that we view this as strictly a university matter for now,” Milton continued. “Maybe that will hold them off for a bit. Of course, if the Harris … woman goes to the DA directly, it’s out of our hands.”
“Of course. Wise decision.”
Martika walked out and went to her own office, the one just down the hall.