On top of all this, Gaia had totally ghosted him. Red heard she’d gone over to the Womyn’s Collective. He swore sometimes women should come equipped with user manuals.
Red needed to do something bold to reassert his primacy over Devon’s progressive hierarchy. Jaylen had outmaneuvered him on racial issues, and now here he was again, but this time it was the fems grabbing the reins. How odd it was that Professor Russell was once again in the crosshairs. Russell was his find, but the fems had moved in, smelling their own big payday courtesy of Uncle Milt.
Fucking Lulu Harris. What was she up to? Red, too, had grown up in Manhattan’s moneyed quarters, so he knew her type. Upper East Side rich chick, bored by everything. Hooking up with her had been amusing, but he could have been anyone. He was a convenience, a plaything. Not that he had any problem with that, mind you. He also had to admit she’d had the decency to split before he’d woken up.
Red asked the leaders of the various progressive groups on campus to come to the PSA house for a meeting—a “summit,” he called it. He promised free beer. All agreed and arrived at the PSA with two or three representatives. No one was entirely clear on the specifics of why they were there, other than a discussion about the Crawl. When everyone was settled, Red stubbed out his clove cigarette on the stone fireplace and hopped up on the raised platform at the end of the room. He saw Gaia was there with the Womyn’s Collective. Jaylen also came, which Red hadn’t been sure about. They hadn’t spoken for some time.
At Red’s side was someone the others didn’t know. He looked older. Next to both of them was an easel on which rested a blank poster board.
“Thank you for coming and welcome to the PSA,” Red said. “Brews are in the tub back there, plus munchies are on the table. I’ve asked you here tonight because the eyes of the world are on this campus, and I believe we are seeing a moment of cultural impact, a rare opportunity when the needle actually moves. I think we should discuss how to best work together. I speak of course about the Crawl, which I know many of us have been joining every night.”
“Go, Lulu!” shouted someone in the back. The group, which numbered about thirty, all snapped fingers.
“To this end, I have invited a guest, one with extensive experience in group action, to talk about where to go from here. Together. Let’s give it up for Julian Knudsen.”
Knudsen looked to be early thirties. He had bushy black hair and was dressed in Timberland boots, frayed khakis, and a T-shirt that said YUCK FOU in big white-on-black letters. In the sixties, campus cops would have called him an outside agitator. Red had met him the previous year at Burning Man and was immediately drawn in. Julian took his Marx straight up, no chaser.
“Brothers and sisters, I am honored to be here among you, among the committed. Seriously, give yourselves a hand.” Julian started snapping to the audience and they responded in kind. “I’m with a group called OSP—Organizing for Social Progress. We are a national organization focusing on collective action at the grassroots level, and let me just say what’s going on here is fucking amazing. Just fucking amazing.”
More snaps.
“Let me ask you all something. Why are we here? Those of us in this room. What is our greater purpose?” Julian began pacing back and forth like a caged cat.
“Well, we’re fighting climate crimes,” said Mark Levine of the Climate Action Group.
“And we’re fighting for LGBT rights,” said Kenny Merrill of the LGBT Coalition.
“No, no, no,” said Julian. “We each have our specific goals, sure, but why are we all here? What is our collective purpose?”
“To support Lulu.”
“Okay, yes, but I’m thinking more broadly.”
“To advance progressive causes,” someone said.
“Yes! But how?”
“By defeating our enemies!” someone else shouted.
“Wrong. Precisely wrong. You don’t want to defeat them. We want to lose—strategically.”
“That makes no sense,” came a reply.
“Let me put it differently. The price of any successful attack is a constructive alternative. Alinsky said that. Alinsky. Think about it. What happens if you make demands and the other side says yes? That’s the moment you have been bought and paid for. They own your ass. That’s why any demands should always be unreasonably high—impossible to comply with. Never give the enemy something they can say yes to. My brother Red here told me how Jaylen played it, making dozens of crazy demands. What happened? Devon cut a fifty-million-dollar check, and Jaylen and his crew stay outraged because they didn’t get everything on the list. The struggle continues. Why do you think the Palestinians don’t have a state? Everyone since Jimmy Carter has offered them one, but they just move the goalposts. Why? Because the moment the struggle succeeds is the moment it ceases to exist, and that is when you lose all power. True power lies in the permanent revolution. Arafat knew that. Castro knew that. If you’re fighting the establishment, you can’t become the establishment.
“This is why demands must always be unreasonable. Just as importantly, your outrage must be diffuse, impossible to pin down with specifics. This is also why, my friends, Lulu Harris is a fucking genius. She’s taking it to another level. Everyone’s making assumptions, but has anyone heard her actually say anything? No. She hasn’t said a goddamn thing to anyone, other than some vague shit on social media. And look, she’s a national news story.”
Julian stopped pacing. The room had grown quiet. Was this guy making some sort of crazy sense? A hand went up, Kirk Browning from the Devon Sustainability Initiative (they had split from the Climate Action Group several years earlier). “This is really confusing. You’re saying we want power, but we don’t want it?”
“We want power—we will have power—but we don’t want our names on the door. We want to control whoever’s name is on the door. As progressives, we play the long game. It’s the accrual of power through a process of constant agitation. Chip away at the power structure until that same power answers to you. Never provide constructive alternatives because it’s a trap—everything becomes your responsibility, and responsibility slows us fucking down.”
“So what are you suggesting we do?”
“Any mobilization strategy requires a face around which we mobilize anger. Alinsky said pick a target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it. The issue of the moment is gender violence, right? So who do you think will be the object of our anger?”
“Men!” offered someone from the Womyn’s Collective.
“Hey!” cried Kenny Merrill.
“Come on, people. Think more strategically than that. Way too broad. We are but ghosts in the wind about specifics except for this one thing, the target.”
“Ephraim Russell!”
“Better, but Russell’s already roadkill.”
“Devon?”
“And who is the face of Devon?”
“Milton Strauss?” someone offered hesitantly.
“Yes!” Julian walked to the easel and flipped over the poster board. There was a large picture of a smiling Milton Strauss. “This is the target. This is the man whose name is on the door. Freeze him, and then make demands.”
“But he’s a progressive, and if I’m being honest, I kinda like him,” said Kirk Browning.
“It doesn’t fucking matter. You understand me? He is the establishment. He runs a school that houses sexual predators on its staff. We connect the dots between Strauss and Russell. It was all Milton Strauss.”
“But if he gets fired, the next guy could be worse. At least Milton shares most of our beliefs.”
“The Milton Strausses of the world are obsessed with power and influence, or at least the appearance of it. They will do almost anything to keep it. Look, one of two things is gonna happen. A: he hangs on, but you control him because he’s terrified of you. I mean, look how fast he cut that fifty-million-dollar check, am I right? Or B: he goes down, in which case the next guy will be even more terrified of you cuz you took the
previous guy out.” Julian’s eyes glowed with the fullness of a man who was doing precisely what he believed he was on this earth to do. He smiled, seeing understanding dawn on the young ones’ faces.
Red stepped in. “I propose we call a student strike. We bring this school to a standstill, blame Milton, and wreck their precious ‘brand.’ We mobilize around the Crawl, and then we issue a shitload of demands.”
“Excuse me.” It was Mark Levine, the greenie. “But where is Lulu Harris? Shouldn’t she have a say in this?”
“We reached out, several times, but never heard back,” Red said. “She seems determined to go solo. But this is bigger than Lulu Harris. Who says she gets to own the underlying issues? No one.”
“I don’t know,” Mark said. “I mean, she started this. I don’t see how we do anything without her involvement.”
“Did she ask any of us to crawl with her? No, but we do it anyway and I don’t hear her complaining. Besides, I’m sure they have been speaking to her at the Womyn’s Collective, right?” Red looked over to Pythia Kamal for help.
“Of course,” Pythia replied, sounding defensive.
“Well, what does she say?”
“I’m not sure that’s any of your business.”
In reality, Pythia had absolutely no idea what was on Lulu’s mind. Lulu wasn’t speaking to them, either, or even to her RA, Yolanda Perez, who was a collective member. The collective had no involvement at all, other than showing up for the Crawl every night. This had been a matter of growing frustration and debate within their ranks, and there were bitter arguments over what to do about it. They had settled mostly on promoting Lulu as an über-survivor. But as far as Pythia was concerned, Red Wheeler didn’t need to know any of this.
“You know, Red,” Pythia said, “I don’t know why we’re even here.”
“We’re here to organize!” said Red.
“No, why we are here.” Pythia motioned to her fellow reps from the collective. “This is clearly a gender issue, and we’re already heavily involved. We don’t need your help.”
Jaylen Biggs jumped in. “Shit, Red, you just trying to hijack this thing for yo’self—make your little group of hippies relevant again. I know your shit.” Pimp-rollin’, trash-talkin’ Jaylen was here tonight. Rye, New York, Andover-educated Jaylen was nowhere to be seen. “And while we at it, where does this bitch get off using a ball and chain? That’s slave shit. She’s appropriatin’!”
“I beg your pardon?” Pythia stood up, facing Jaylen.
“Cut the shit, Jaylen, we’re all on the same side,” Red said.
“Fuck we are. I know what’s up here. We got our fifty mil and you been pissed ever since. You just want some of our action.”
Pythia sat back down as the confrontation swiveled back in Red’s direction.
“Jaylen, please. You know I think you guys deserved every penny.”
“Actually, we would like to know something,” interrupted Kirk Browning. “How come them?” He was looking toward Jaylen and the Af-Am members.
“What?” Red said.
“How come they get fifty million dollars? I mean, no one here doubts the struggles for people of color, but seriously? Sit around Milton’s office for a few days and you get fifty million dollars? What about the rest of us? We all have valid causes.” There was much murmuring at this. Brown was saying what many were thinking but reluctant to say themselves.
“I agree.” It was Atepa Smith from the Devon Native American Society. “No one has been more oppressed than we Native Americans. We are the victims of genocide, and we don’t understand why African-American causes have been the sole beneficiary of the school’s largesse.”
Jaylen sneered, “You think you’re more oppressed than black people? We were fucking slaves, yo. And how many Indians are at Devon, anyway? Like three? Fuck off.”
“But we are thirty percent of Devon, and no one gave us fifty million dollars either.” It was an Asian kid Red didn’t recognize. Who invited him?
“You ain’t oppressed, so you can fuck off, too,” offered Jaylen.
“On the contrary, we built the railroads as slave labor, we were rounded up into internment camps in World War Two, and now our reward is we have to get perfect SAT scores to have any hope of getting into Devon, whereas they roll out the welcome mat when one of you guys nails a twelve hundred. Twelve hundred sucks!”
“Fuck you, man! Go back to the fuckin’ library.”
“Excuse me,” interjected Aaron Gershman from the Devon Hillel Society. “But we came here tonight on behalf of Jewish students to object to the use of the term survivor.”
The room erupted in shouting and finger-pointing.
“This is bullshit,” Jaylen said. He and half a dozen others from the Cultural Center turned and left, Jaylen waving his middle finger on the way out.
The feminists looked like they were getting ready to leave, too, and Red knew he’d better step in before the meeting completely fell apart. “Comrades, comrades! We are all part of the larger struggle, are we not? Now let’s put our heads together and work this out.”
“Sorry, Red,” Pythia said. “I think the collective can handle this one all on its own.” She motioned to her people, and they promptly walked toward the door, including Gaia.
“Pythia, come on!” cried Red, trying his best not to sound desperate.
“Bye, Red.” They were gone.
He took stock. Maybe two dozen people were left, but not the right two dozen. Left were the Asians—useless—the greens, the Native Americans, the Latinos, the gays, and the Jews, all of whom were now shouting about which group laid claim to the top spot on the hierarchy of oppression. The people Red really needed were gone.
“I thought you said you owned this place,” Julian said.
Devon Daily
March 29
Tribunal Convened as #Crawlpeace Enters Fifteenth Day
The Devon Title IX Tribunal concerning the accusations of sexual assault against Professor Ephraim Russell will convene in the coming days, the Daily has learned. The hearing will be conducted by Dean Martika Malik-Adams. The case is widely believed to concern an alleged assault on Louise Harris, a first-year in Duffy Hall. Although Harris has never made an accusation publicly, it is believed her nightly crawl across campus is a symbolic protest over the alleged assault.
Further details about the tribunal are unknown at this time.
Meanwhile, #Crawlpeace has become a phenomenon extending far beyond the confines of the Devon campus. Many livestream the event on Facebook or YouTube. Adding to the spectacle, members of the Devon Womyn’s Collective are now pulling a pink cardboard construction on wheels meant to represent the female vagina.
The primal-like scream that concludes each night’s Crawl has been adopted on other campuses across the country, occurring each night at exactly the same time as in East Quad. The largest such gathering was two days ago at UC Berkeley, where over one thousand gathered in Sproul Plaza to scream in sympathy.
Earlier this week, the Crawl persisted despite four inches of late-season snow. Concerns about Harris’s mental and physical health have been expressed within the community. Ms. Harris has steadfastly refused to comment to this paper or any other media, and it is not known how long she intends to continue her protest.
APRIL
Title IX
MARTIKA MALIK-ADAMS EXAMINED the photo before her and her blood boiled. While this was not an uncommon emotional state for her, the feeling was particularly acute today. The photo showed the badly beaten face of Lulu Harris. Yolanda Perez had provided it during her testimony.
Ephraim Russell will pay for this.
For too long, Martika knew, campuses had been playgrounds for sexual predators. The consensus fact was that 25 percent of all female students were sexually assaulted. A study said so. Title IX was changing all that by finally bringing justice for survivors.
Those who suggested that a woman—any woman—would fabricate an allegation of abuse furth
er angered Martika. A growing chorus on the right, from odious places such as Fox News, was trying to create a counternarrative by exploiting one or two instances with confused women, such as the one at UVA on the cover of Rolling Stone. If Martika’s first mission in life was to help survivors, her second was to see people like that suffer in hell.
Of course, in Lulu’s case there could be no question. The evidence was all too clear.
A few short years ago, she knew, justice for Lulu would have been difficult at best. Allegations were swept under the rug, as was most anything that posed a threat to the collegiate “brand.” Title IX came like a cleansing storm, washing away decades of filth. Most people didn’t understand it, thinking it was about gender equity in athletics, and it did start that way, back in 1972. The initial effects saw an increase in the number of women’s varsity sports programs at most colleges.
That was fine as far as it went, but for Martika and other activists, it was nowhere near enough. They lobbied for more. In 2009, the Department of Education sent out a communication now famously known as the “Dear Colleague” letter. It stated that the intent of Title IX was not simply equal access to athletics, but rather equal access to education, and any college that didn’t provide this access was in noncompliance. Noncompliance meant an investigation by the OCR. These investigations were extremely time-consuming and expensive, costing hundreds of thousands in legal and compliance. But far worse was the implicit threat of turning off the funding spigot. This hung like the sword of Damocles over the Milton Strausses of the world. Last year, Devon pulled in a whopping $720 million from the federal government, mostly in research grants. Even with all of Devon’s riches, it could not afford to make an enemy of Uncle Sam. While it was legally murky whether some DOE bureaucrat could pull the plug over Title IX noncompliance, the bureaucrats were happy to leave the impression they could. Poking the bear was simply not worth it.
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