Scholarly Pursuits

by M. Louisa Locke

  Nate told her that belonging to the Delta Upsilons had really helped him out his freshman year since most of the men at the college were local, living at home, or going home on weekends. He said the fraternity house became his home and his fraternity brothers his first group of friends. He pointed out that, unlike Seth Timmons, who worked and went to school, most men who joined fraternities didn’t work. This meant they had a lot more time on their hands. What fraternities could do was provide these young men with opportunities that would keep them out of trouble…like practicing for the fraternity glee club, representing their houses in team sports, playing whist or billiards in the safe environment of the house, rather than in a local saloon.

  She hadn’t thought about it quite that way, but she had asked him why all she heard about was the drinking and petty vandalism, as well as the constant disparaging of those serious students on campus whom they called diggers or grinds. He had said that it was possible that the fraternities on Berkeley campus had been suffering under some bad leaders, but she shouldn’t tar everyone who was a fraternity member with the same brush.

  She was about to tell him that the reason she wanted Ned Goodwin to tell her who was involved in certain pranks on campus was so she could figure out if this activity represented only a limited number of fraternity men. But that might have led back to her investigations into Grace and Willie’s deaths, and Nate seemed to be still under the impression this was all about the article she was writing, which was a safer topic.

  Instead, she asked him when Seth had told him about her continued investigations. His reaction had been odd, involving some story about Seth and their friend Mitchell, the medical student, dragging him out to lunch on Monday. Didn’t really matter, what mattered was that Seth had gone and tattled on her, like she was some wayward child. Is that really the way he thought about her? She thought he didn’t mind their age difference. What if all this time he’d just been humoring her, pretending a regard he didn’t feel? No, she didn’t believe that…she couldn’t.

  At least Caro Sutton was sympathetic when they met yesterday morning before classes. Laura relayed what happened and the disappointing fact that she’d not gotten any new information out of Ned. That’s when they made plans to meet today at Caro’s boarding house.

  As usual, when she arrived, she didn’t bother ringing the bell but came on in. Caro had left the door to the attic unlocked, so she knocked but went right up the stairs and discovered her friend sprinkling salt over a spot on the sleeve of her wool coat.

  She went over to look at the stain and said, “Is that ink? I’m forever getting some on my cuffs, and Kathleen Hennessey, our clever boarding house maid, swears by soaking them in milk to get the stain out.” Noticing how large an area Caro was covering in salt, she said, “My goodness, that looks like you spilled an entire pot. What happened?”

  “I wasn’t the one that spilled it. I left my coat on my chair to go look up a book in the library, and when I got back, ink was dripping down the sleeve.”

  “Good heavens, how could that have happened? I mean, fountain pens can leak, but not that much, and there is an ink pot down in the Ladies Lounge for refilling pens, but who would carry an ink pot around with them? No one fessed up to accidentally spilling ink on your coat?”

  “No, and I don’t believe it was an accident.” Caro put the salt shaker down and said, in her most matter of fact tone, “Laura, it’s started.”

  “What’s started?”

  “The kind of harassment Grace and Julia Beck suffered. Only now, I’m the target.”

  “You’re saying that someone deliberately spilled ink on your coat?” Laura paused, hearing how skeptical she sounded. “I mean is that the only thing that’s happened?”

  “No, the initial incidents were Monday morning. First, when I entered the first floor of North Hall, for some reason several young men blocked my way. Then, as I got to the door into Moses’ political economy class, two students rushed to squeeze past me, one of them jarring my elbow and making me drop my bag. At the time, I didn’t see the significance of the two events, besides feeling a spurt of irritation. However, in the afternoon, in LeConte’s zoology class in South Hall, as I went up the aisle to leave class, Bart Keller stuck out his foot and tripped me. I went down on one knee, and he jumped up and pretended to help me back up. What he was actually doing was pinching my upper arm as he said loudly, ‘Miss Sutton, you really must be more careful.’ That’s when I thought about what had happened earlier in the day.”

  “Oh, Caro, this is awful. Do you remember who the other men were?”

  “No, because at the time I didn’t consider it as out of the ordinary. I can’t even swear that they were fraternity men. But Mr. Keller’s behavior was so overt, I started paying more attention to my surroundings. For example, a moment later, as I was going down the South Hall stairs, four men rushed past me, pushing me hard, right into the wall. They were Elliot Sinclair, Bart Keller, and the two sophomores they call Brick and Tadpole. I looked this Brick up in last year’s Blue and Gold when I got home, and he is definitely a Zeta. The fourth boy, however, is a Chi Phi. But then this fourth boy might not have realized their intent and just happened to be going down the stairs with them.”

  “I suppose that we can’t assume that every rude action by a student is part of a general campaign, so many of them behave badly just for the fun of it. But did this sort of behavior continue today?”

  “Same sort of stuff. Mostly minor inconveniences. Being shoved in the stairwells and hallways, the under-the-breath comments about my appearance as I go by certain students, and attempts to trip me or step on my skirts as I go up or down the aisles in the classrooms. Bart Keller is the worst offender. Today, in Moses’ class, he pretended he had something to ask the professor before class started. This gave him an excuse to go past where I was sitting on the way back to his seat. He knocked my books off the corner of my desk as he went by, resulting in gales of laughter from the boys in the back row. Of course, this is the sort of clownish behavior he’s known for, so I doubt anyone thought anything about it.”

  “I didn’t notice Bart doing anything in Putzker’s class.” Laura wondered if she had been too caught up in her own grievances to notice. Is that what happened with Grace? Everyone was just too self-involved to notice?

  “I thought about that. But everyone else besides Bart and myself in our German class is a freshman, therefore they weren’t even here during the various scandals. So none of your classmates would have any reason to be personally upset with Grace…or me as her cousin. And even if a few of them, like Ned Goodwin, belong to a fraternity, they are a minority of the class. I think even Bart might feel uncomfortable being too overt in this class. Putzker’s already watching him like a hawk.”

  “I think you’re right. Bart strikes me as the kind of person who likes a supportive audience.”

  Caro nodded and said, “In contrast, all the men with me in Moses and LeConte’s classes are juniors, or failed seniors like Mr. Keller, and they most certainly will have some sort of opinion on what happened during the fraternity-anti-fraternity struggles. Even more significantly, two-thirds of men in the junior class are members of a fraternity.”

  “Two-thirds? Good heavens, I didn’t realize the percentage was that high. I see what you mean. Someone trying to do something like this to a woman in one of my freshman classes would stand out. I can imagine how Seth would respond, and I don’t think he would be the only person who would object. But in the classes dominated by fraternity men, there would be a certain safety in numbers.”

  “Yes, and Julia Beck mentioned that she found it hard to distinguish between the men who were instigating the harassment against her and those who were just being immature cads. She also said a lot of what occurred happened anonymously, like the spilled ink on my coat today. As a result, she didn’t know who was responsible.”

  “We were right? Julia was harassed as well?”

  “Yes, and we were also right
about our suspicions that the hazing got so bad she had to drop out of school early in the fall of ’79. That’s why she is listed as a junior, even though she started with the class of ’81 and should be graduating this spring.”

  The more Caro recounted what she had learned in her conversation with Julia Beck and Alice Pratt, the more upset Laura became. It made her ill to think of Miss Beck being pursued and tormented until she experienced a breakdown, imagining the same thing happening to Grace. Most of all, now she was afraid for Caro.

  Caro concluded by saying, “From what Julia told me, I suspect I have only gotten a taste of what she and Grace had to go through. Julia described textbooks defaced, pages from her notebooks ripped out, and she also mentioned anonymous notes, like the ones I found, left in her campus mailbox that contained disparaging remarks about her looks and her marriage prospects. And it seems that the trick with the spilled ink was not newly invented for me.”

  “Why didn’t she go to the university authorities? Grace might not have realized at first why she was being targeted, but surely Julia did? Didn’t you say that there was a general campaign against everyone who wrote for the Oestrus after the fraternity ban was passed?”

  “She said, besides the fact that the more serious examples of harassment, like the notes and damaged property, were done anonymously, she’d seen the uproar that occurred when President LeConte targeted a few men for pulling off the Junior Exhibition’s Bogus Program, and the men who’d served with her on the Oestrus counseled against telling anyone what was happening. They said she would be simply leaving herself open to charges of slander if she accused someone without proof.”

  I wonder if that is true? I can’t ask Nate; he’d want to know all the details.

  Laura said, “But what about the acts like tripping that weren’t anonymous? Couldn’t she have reported those students?”

  Caro shrugged and said, “Can you imagine the response I would get if I went to President LeConte today and said that someone pushed me on the stairs or made an off-color comment as I passed by? Besides, how do we know that Grace didn’t go to someone in authority?”

  Stunned, Laura said, “Oh, Caro, you mean the person she said she trusted and shouldn’t have? I didn’t think of that. We need to be very careful who we talk to about what is going on.”

  “Yes, we do. And we need to think about timing. Why did the harassment start this Monday? Why not last week, which is what you would expect if Willie told someone about my threats before or during the camping trip?”

  Laura’s heart sped up, and she said, “It’s because of what I said to Ned on Sunday, isn’t it? What a fool I was, letting Celia get under my skin that way. I should have just stuck to my story that I was doing research for an article, not mentioned Grace and what happened to her, since everyone knows you are Grace’s cousin. If Ned went back to the fraternity house and reported that I’d been asking about the destruction of the Junior Exhibition Day decorations and the fake essay for the literary society meeting, this would explain why the next day they would start trying to intimidate you.”

  “But why wouldn’t you be the target? Have you noticed any unusual actions taken against you?” Caro asked.

  “No, but remember, you have already made a good argument about why it would be harder for someone to do something in one of my freshman classes. And when I’m on campus, going to and from classes, I am usually with Kitty, Celia, and Seth, or one of the other freshmen taking the literary classes. I would bet that you would seem an easier target to the fraternity boys like Bart, particularly if the goal is to frighten you so you will leave town before making good your threats.”

  “But that would mean that whoever was behind this recent activity knew of my conversation with Willie as well. And we need to consider the possibility that Grace had confided in someone with more authority than some fraternity boy. That might be what Willie meant when he said there might be someone behind all this. Again, think about the timing. I still haven’t heard from Reverend Mason. What if he’s not getting back to me because he’s behind everything? He certainly would fit the description of someone Grace would trust, and that would explain why I, not you, have become the target.”

  “I guess so, although I do find the idea of a minister being involved in all this pretty far-fetched. Could Julia or her roommate Alice have mentioned your conversation to anyone?”

  “I sincerely doubt it. First of all, Julia kept telling me how wretched she felt that she hadn’t reached out to Grace when she got hints that my cousin was facing similar harassment. She kept saying it was moral cowardice on her part and that she would like to help me get to the bottom of what happened in any way she could.”

  “She should at least be able to confirm whether or not the people who are overtly harassing you also harassed her,” Laura said, glad that they now had additional confirmation that what had happened to Grace was more than a couple of isolated incidents.

  “I’m sure she will. In fact, she gave me quite a significant look this morning in Moses’ political economy class when I took the side aisle to get to my seat at the front, which let me avoid Bart and his cronies. And Saturday she told me that Elliot Sinclair had been one of the fraternity men who went out of his way to block her passage and blow cigarette smoke into her face whenever he could. However, she said the Zetas weren’t the only fraternity men who gave her a hard time, although most of the leaders in the other fraternities were in the class of ’80 and have since graduated.”

  “Did you ask her about Sanders? He seems even more likely than Reverend Mason to be the one who is directing the harassment, given the signs we saw of Grace’s growing antipathy towards him. If he’s friends with any Zetas, they may have conveyed what Ned said to him.”

  “I asked about his role in the political divisions on campus, and both Julia and Alice seemed to feel he worked hard to appear neutral. On the other hand, they had an interesting story to tell about him. The same semester as the infamous Singer, the fake Junior Exhibition Day program, there was another scandal. This involved the publication of something called the Scylla that was supposedly put out by the fraternities.”

  “Supposedly?”

  “Julia said that the fraternities, particularly the Zetas, said it was really put out by some of the editors of the Oestrus to malign them. Anyway, Julia’s point was that this broadsheet, very much along the same lines as the Stinger, had a story in it about how two of the junior women were in a love triangle with Professor Sanders.”

  “Good heavens, do you think there was any truth to that story?”

  “Julia didn’t know the answer to that. She did believe, however, that one of the reasons that the anti-fraternity ban was at first supported by the majority of the faculty was because one of their own had been attacked in this broadsheet. Nevertheless, if the story had any truth to it, and Grace found out, this could explain why she turned against him. She would have been terribly upset.”

  “And if she confronted him about this, I guess he could retaliate by getting fraternity boys to harass her. And if he heard that you were threatening to go to the authorities, he might send them after you.”

  “After silencing Willie on the camping trip?” Laura heard the disbelief in Caro’s voice.

  “That’s where I have trouble, as well. The stuff about him and the female student is old news. Besides, he’s married to a very handsome wife, so why would he stray? Was there anything else Julia could add that would suggest Sanders could be involved?”

  “Yes, now that you mention it. Alice recounted a strange story about Grace showing up late for the first meeting of the Philosophy Club last fall. She and Julia are members.”

  “Oh, that’s the club that Royce has mentioned in my logic class. Didn’t Sanders start it? Seth was interested; he’s always had a sort of grand passion about German philosophers. One of the reasons I was surprised he chose the classics curriculum rather than the literary. Of course he can’t belong to the Philosophy Club because
it meets on Thursday evenings, when he’s at work.”

  “Alice said that membership is by invitation only and that last term, when it started, you had to have an invitation from Sanders. Royce and the French instructor, Proctor, are the other two faculty members who belong, along with a couple of recent graduates. Julia said what was extraordinary is that of the fourteen student members, half of those chosen to join are women, including her and Alice.”

  “That reinforces Sanders’ reputation for supporting women’s academic careers. And, it seems like, no matter what Grace felt about him, she agreed to attend. But what was this ‘strange occurrence?’”

  “The club met at Sanders’ house; he rents one of the two university cottages across Strawberry Creek from the Harmon Gymnasium. Alice said Grace showed up an hour late to the meeting and that my cousin was so embarrassed she was near tears.”

  “Oh dear, did either Alice or Julia know why she was late?”

  “Alice said one of the other students later confided that Grace muttered something about how her invitation said the meeting started at eight o’clock, not seven.”

  Laura pictured the student mailboxes in North Hall, where such an invitation would have arrived. The same bank of mailboxes where anonymous notes might have been deposited. “Caro, if you were Sanders, it would be so easy to write out Grace’s invitation with the wrong time on it.”

  “It would also be pretty easy for a student or another faculty member to be on the lookout for the invitations and tamper with it. Just like the switch that was made with Grace’s essay and caused her such public humiliation. This could have been a rehearsal for that event, because the Philosophy Club meeting was November 10, a day before the literary society.”