Mind Change

by T'Gracie Reese

  The Director of Operational Review.

  The Associate Vice-Director for Operational and Contractual Services.

  The Associate Director of Sponsored Programs, Finance Administration, and Compliance.

  The Executive Associate to the Assistant Director of Information Distribution.

  The Director of Auxiliary Services.

  The Assistant Director of Auxiliary Services.

  The Director of Academic Planning and Faculty Development.

  The Assistant to the Director of Academic Planning and Faculty Development.

  The Vice President for Academic Affairs.

  The Vice President for Institutional Planning and Effectiveness.

  The Associate Vice President for Institutional Planning and Effectiveness.

  The Dean of the Department of Special Services Programs.”

  She paused.

  “I could go on. There are a hundred and sixteen more of them. None of them do anything. Let me say this again, so that you understand it.”

  She paused again.

  “None of them do anything.”

  “But, Lucinda––”

  “Tom, in every office in this university, there is one woman who knows how things work. Registration, grade transferring, enrollment, adding and dropping––the true administrative needs of a university. One woman in each office. She is generally about forty years old, and she knows the answer to every question, having worked here all of her professional life, and being both resourceful and clever. This woman is generally paid forty thousand dollars a year. She and her equally clever and equally underpaid and underappreciated colleagues who are spread across the campus, accomplish all of the true, necessary, administrative work. They are, in fact, administrators. The rest, the ones I’ve just read to you are simply bureaucrats. They do nothing but go to meetings and eat chicken salad. The administrative bill for chicken salad alone is, for one school year, over one hundred thousand dollars. Mr. Barnes?”

  “Yes?”

  “Has your paper been trying all afternoon to contact these various offices?”

  “Yes.”

  “How many administrators have you been able to contact?”

  “Only one, I think.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s Friday.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Barnes. And, by the way, it’s nice that somebody actually does work on Fridays.”

  Then she turned back to the blackboard.

  “Now, I’m sure you’re all asking yourselves, how much money are we talking about here? How much money are we going to save, yearly, by dismissing useless people. Well, I’ll show you. Let’s see what you get when you multiply 1263—the number of people fired—by one hundred thousand dollars a year, which is what most of them make.”

  Then she took a piece of chalk and wrote the figures:

  1263

  Then: times one thousand.

  000

  Then: times ten thousand

  000

  Then: times one hundred thousand

  000

  The figure on the board was:

  126, 300,000,

  “One hundred and twenty six million, three hundred thousand dollars. Per year. Every year. That is the amount of money we pay to people who do not teach, who perform no useful activity, who write things that no one will ever read, or who do experiments of no use to any current or future being on this planet.”

  She continued:

  “Now, let us assume that similar figures apply to the top one hundred so called “research” institutions of this country. All of us together are wasting over one billion dollars per year. Every year.”

  The number hung there for a time.

  Finally, a response came from the Chairman of the Board and from two other members, one whom the president had addressed as “Tom,” and the other whose name plate was hidden. The two men were white-haired and pasty-faced.

  “Lucinda,” said the first of them, “No one questions that there are overages in the salary structure.”

  “There is, Oliver, insanity in the salary structure.”

  “All right. If that’s what you choose to call it.”

  “That’s what it is.”

  “Fine. But this is not the way to deal with it.”

  “No?”

  “Of course not! You can’t simply fire twelve hundred people!”

  “Why not? Every week a major corporation or manufacturing company closes a factory and lays off just as many workers, including people who actually work. All that I’m doing is laying off people who do not work. At least not at anything sane or constructive.”

  Barbara Richardson.

  “Lucinda, there are ways to bring about change.”

  “I believe I have brought about change.”

  “Yes, but at what cost?”

  “Not cost. Savings. Over one-hundred million dollars. Do you have that much money to waste, Barbara?”

  “But we should have been apprised!”

  “You are being apprised.”

  Shakes of head.

  Third white-haired man:

  “President Herndon. This is a major research university.”

  “No, Tom, it used to be major research university fifty years ago.

  Pause. Silence.

  Barbara Richardson:

  “Lucinda, we have agreements with foundations, research facilities all over the world.”

  “We certainly do, Barbara. I’ve been in touch with many of them, and it heartens me to know of their existence. I’ve simply told The Carnegie Foundation that we no longer have the funds to pay for Professor Olbive’s research into extinct, burrowing shrimp. But that they are quite at liberty to take on his salary if they so choose. We will not begrudge them the glory of his discoveries. He and they can go down with Galileo and Jonas Salk as great minds of modern times. We will know about the motion of the planets; we will eliminate polio; and we will know what happened to these damned shrimp a million years ago—and the Carnegie Foundation will get the credit! It will only cost them, for the next five years, about five million dollars.”

  She paused.

  Then, leaning forward, she said:

  “But, Barbara, we can’t afford it!”

  Silence around the Board Room.

  “And you can’t afford it; and the students’ parents, many of whom are mortgaging their homes so their children can come here and be educated, can’t afford it; and the people of this state, who are paying us tax money so that we can do our jobs as educators, can’t afford it!”

  She shouted the last lines.

  No one said anything for a while. Then, more quietly, the president went on.

  “I am not curtailing anyone’s freedom of speech. I am simply refusing to pay for what they say, especially when it’s drivel. Absolute drivel.”

  “Lucinda––”

  “Yes, Barbara?”

  “Lucinda, these articles you’ve read. These research interests––of course, I can’t understand them. I’ll be the first to admit that. But I’m not supposed to understand them. These professors are experts in their fields. They’re writing above my head.”

  Lucinda Herndon, at that, took the wooden podium from the table, and set it on the floor. She then sat down, sighed, and was silent for a time, nodding her head.

  Finally she said, quietly:

  “And that is it. That is the soul of it. Thank you for putting it so well, Barbara. I could not have done so. Perhaps my husband could have. He saw it beginning, you know, though it had never grown to the thing it is now. I wish he were here. I wish he were here to speak to all of you, because I’m not sure I’m capable. And it’s so important. So, so important.”

  Again, she was silent for a time.

  Finally, she said, quietly:

  “Because you can’t understand what they say, you think that they are somehow smarter than you are. But that is not true. Because they write in their own invented jargon, you think they are saying things inf
initely wise. But that is not true, either. They say, ‘morphological cytophormai,’ and you think ‘wisdom’.”

  She shrugged.

  “When all it is, is garbage. In reality, they’re just con artists, pulling off one of the greatest scams in history. Not since the French Revolution has such a useless class of people been treated with so much respect and given so much money. The only difference is that the French aristocrats dressed better.”

  She leaned forward:

  “They’re villains, Barbara. They’re the bad guys. Our entire educational system is a shambles. Our middle school students don’t know anything; our high school students don’t know anything. And we blame the poor teachers. While all the time the ‘best and brightest’ of us, or at least the best paid, the most coddled––rather than inspiring us, rather than showing us the real magic in mathematics and literature and poetry––rather than giving actual models to the teachers and students and parents––they’re flying off to hotels in San Francisco, where they can talk about ‘the libidinal investment of collapsed signification’.”

  Then, with a shake of her head:

  “They’re frauds, Barbara. Frauds.”

  Then, to everyone else in the room:

  “And they’re fired.”

  She got up from the table, walked around it, and resumed her original seat.

  After a time, Barbara Richardson said:

  “We’ve all been touched by your passion, Lucinda. None of us, I know, myself certainly, realized the depth of your feelings on these matters. But you must realize the difficulty, the near impossibility, of the situation you’ve put the Board in. If you had consulted us, if we could have formed some kind of fact-finding committee––”

  Silence.

  Then:

  “Lucinda, there is still time to reconsider this move. We could point out that it was a kind of ‘shock therapy,’ designed to help us actually assess where the university stands at this point in time, where there are areas for growth, where we need perhaps to cut back. We could––”

  “No,” said Lucinda Herndon.

  Silence.

  After a time, Barbara Richardson said:

  “Well. You don’t leave the Board much choice.”

  “You have two choices,” the President answered.

  “Then––we have heard your positions. I think now I must ask you––and our visitors––to leave the room. You understand that we will be voting on your dismissal.”

  “I understand.”

  “Then, if the three of you would––”

  “I need to say something.”

  That voice came from someone who had not yet spoken.

  “You all know me. I’m Pete Stockton.”

  The man had a huge handlebar mustache. His voice was deep, mellow, slow, like a clean north wind with stars sprinkled through it. As for the man himself, his face was like tinfoil, except brown instead of silver. Every line in that face was a washed out gulley in some cattle spread. He had slicked back hair, the color of real tinfoil and not brown tinfoil, and his eyes, if the lights had been turned out in the room and the shades drawn, would have sparkled and mean-glittered enough for all to read by.

  “This president,” he growled, “has fired more than twelve hundred people without consulting one damned person on this board. She could have formed committees; she could have done studies; she could have included the faculty in this thing; she could have included the Provost; she could have alerted the media. But instead, she just went off on her own and did it. Now we’re sitting here with the Associated Press reporting every word of this meeting to the entire goddamned world––twelve hundred faculty and administrators out of a job––and all because this lady decided, completely on her own, to carry out this vision of hers.

  He paused. No one would have dared say anything.

  “Now. You all know that I give a sizeable amount of money to this institution every year. But if you support this woman, right now, in plain view of everybody––I will double that contribution!”

  There was a huge whooshing sound as all of the air seemed, at once, to escape from the room.

  But Peter Stockton merely continued:

  “I’ve been on this board for ten years, and this is the first goddamned thing I’ve heard that’s made a lick of sense.”

  He looked around the table, from face to face to face, then said:

  “Moreover, I can assure you that I’m not alone in my feelings about this. I have a group of friends. We mostly started in oil and gas, but we’ve branched out over the years, and we dabble in a good many things at the present time. Information System Designs, Land Development…those kinds of things. And I can promise you this: if you support this lady and clean the polecats off of this beautiful campus, we will all double our contributions. Fire her and you won’t get a nickel from any of us!”

  The stare went around again.

  “Also––you’ve been reading about this proposed bypass that either is or isn’t going to get built north of town. It isn’t going to get built because me and my friends now own that land. Not too many people know that, but they will. President Herndon––”

  She nodded back.

  “President Herndon, if you do, in fact, carry through with this, that fifty acres of land is yours!”

  “Oh, my God!”

  Nina had no idea who said “Oh, my God!”

  It could have been anyone at the table.

  “And my friends and I will build for you whatever buildings you want on it. They’re all yours. You want dormitories, we’ll build you dormitories. You want classrooms, for real teachers and not these imposters, we’ll build you classrooms. The money we have available for this project––and I’m not talking a hundred million dollars, ma’am; I’m talking real money––is yours. We’re having some problems with enrollment, I read. It’s down a bit.”

  “Yes, Peter, it is,” replied Lucinda.

  “What do you foresee will happen to enrollment, if these good folks on the board here support you, and you get to carry out your full plans for this university?”

  “It will double.”

  More shock from around the table.

  “Lucinda––”

  This from Barbara Richardson.

  “––Lucinda, did you say “double?’”

  “Yes.”

  “But that can’t happen.”

  “Of course, it can happen.”

  “But––by when?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  “What?”

  “Tomorrow. Our enrollment will double by tomorrow.”

  “Are you joking?”

  “No.”

  “How can it double by tomorrow?”

  “It will double tomorrow because of the story that Mr. Barnes is, even as we speak, sending to his paper, and which is being run on the Associated Press. Because of this story, the enrollment will double. And it will keep on growing.”

  “Good,” said Peter Stockton. “Lucinda, I have no idea how you plan to double the enrollment of this university––”

  “We will,” she interrupted him, “take the vast amounts of money that we have been wasting on useless people and useless projects, and use it to educate the students who have entrusted us with it.”

  “All right then.”

  “We will, by the way, be the first institution actually to do that. And so our enrollment will more than double. It will, in fact, be whatever we want it to be.”

  “How many new students are you expecting, come next fall?”

  “Let’s say ten thousand. We’ll cap it at that right now.”

  “All right. You have my word, Lucinda, that you will have classroom space and dormitory space for those folks. And for their teachers.”

  “Thank you, Peter.”

  All of the rest of the Board, Nina found herself musing, now resembled the disciples from Leonardo DaVinci’s The Last Supper: mute, insignificant, watching something they did not understand at all, but unifor
mly certain that it was pretty important, and that they had not heard the last of it.

  “Now,” said Peter Stockton, addressing the Board, “while you folks make your decision, Lucinda and I and Mr. Barnes and Ms. Bannister are going to find some place to have a cup of coffee.”

  Once they were out in the hall, the president spoke to Stockton:

  “The last year has, I’m sure, been a difficult one for you, Peter. What with Maggie’s death––”

  “Yes, it’s been tough. I miss her a lot.”

  “I know you do. We all miss her.”

  “But you went through that with Thomas.”

  “Yes. It gets easier. It’s never the same. But it gets easier. Here. Let’s go in here. The coffee is abominable. But the machines do at least work.”

  They contributed quarters and the occasional dollar bill, a process that seemed ludicrous in light of the past discussion. But somehow they were able to find four cups of coffee, get cream for it, stir it, and sit at a red vinyl plastic table beneath a huge television screen that was showing a game show.

  Other than the four of them, the snack bar was deserted.

  Peter Stockton smiled at Rick and said:

  “I like your newspaper, Mr. Barnes.”

  “Thank you.”

  “There are only two things wrong with it.”

  “Those being?”

  “Well, of course, it’s too damned liberal.”

  “I know. We get that a lot.”

  “And the Friday crossword puzzle.”

  “Yeah. It’s a hard one.”

  “I can do all the others. Monday I do in about ten minutes. But that Friday one, man, it’s a bear.”

  “It’s from The New York Times.”

  “Well, that would explain it. Explain the liberal thing, too.”

  “Yeah. Sorry about both problems.”

  “Probably not a lot you can do about either one. Ms. Bannister, it’s an honor to be around you. Your Lissie movement took a lot of guts. I can see why you’re a friend of Lucinda here.”

  The president smiled at Nina, then said:

  “Nina is more important in this matter than she knows. I suppose I can tell you this now, Nina.”

  “Tell me what?”

  “All of this plan was simply something in thin air. I wasn’t certain I’d have the courage to do it. I saw myself as just one single person, and a woman at that. Then I saw the production of Lysistrata in Bay St. Lucy. I re-read the play. I was able to find tapes of your comments from Washington. And I said to myself, yes, it can be done. It simply takes guts. So I said, ‘I will bring her here. I will see her again, and, if she’s here standing by me—I can do anything.’”