Just the Truth

by Gen LaGreca

  He returned to his car and sat. Although he had only rarely and briefly been inside Laura's home, he remembered every part of it. He watched various lights go on beyond the pulled drapery. Laura was in the kitchen, then in the living room, then the bedroom. He listened to a few opera pieces he had stored on his phone. He listened to the triumphal notes of a soaring chorus as an army returned home in victory. He listened to the tender duet of two lovers passionately declaring their love. He listened to the ringing aria of a rebel solemnly vowing to defeat a tyrant. He thought of Laura fighting at her own barricade. How was it that such violent emotions could be felt in life? How was it that the things they pursued resonated to the core in such people and that they would do anything to fight for them? Laura was the star in her own operatic life, he thought. She was among those whose lofty values would be considered impractical, naïve, and melodramatic in the world he inhabited, yet she was more exciting and full of life than anyone else.

  When all the lights were out in Laura's house, Sean drove away.

  Chapter 15

  October began with the protests of the previous week continuing at Collier University. During the stand-off, a new normal was established. The protestors had set up their headquarters at the dean's office in the administration building, which they still occupied. The dean moved from his temporary quarters in the music building to a space in the science building with security to prevent entry by the protestors. A makeshift office with a desk and chairs had been hastily assembled for Dean Stewart Folner in one of the laboratories. Whereas his vacated office contained a niche with a curtained bay window and statuary on pedestals, the dean's new workplace had a niche for an exhaust hood with flasks and burners for mixing chemicals. Whereas his vacated office contained a marble-topped walnut sideboard holding two porcelain lamps, a crystal vase, and a gilded antique clock, his new workplace contained epoxy-resin countertops holding a spectrophotometer, microscope, digital scale, and other equipment, along with test tubes and bottles of solvents. As the setting of his life changed from regal to humble, he thought of the one student who could restore him to princely status—if she weren't so damn stubborn!

  Before any school official could stop the staff of the Voice, the young reporters published a new edition of the newspaper. It contained an editorial supporting their beleaguered editor.

  Kate Taninger speaks for all of us. We will not be silenced. We will not be bullied. We support a citizen's right to question the new voting system and hold the government accountable, as Laura Taninger is doing. We also assert our own prerogative to express an opinion on the matter in our newspaper.

  This issue goes beyond any side's position on the new voting system. Whatever your views on that particular issue, all sides should be able to air their opinions without fear of intimidation. All sides should be willing to present arguments, not invectives or threats. Some students have written to us with opposing arguments, which we have published as Letters to the Editor.

  We will not let our voice be silenced. We urge our editor-in-chief, Kate Taninger, to continue to write her column, speak her mind, and respond to her critics.

  In her Editor's Column, there was no apology from Kate Taninger. Guided by a keen intelligence and a maturity beyond her years, she penned her next piece, titled "Book Burning."

  There was a time when humans didn't have the rule of law, which means they hadn't yet established an orderly, peaceful way to live together. A civil society was an achievement thousands of years in the making. Before societies had the rule of law, angry mobs dominated them. These mobs held brute power over people who were forced to comply with their orders. During these ugly times in history, a mob could be roused to a fever pitch in order to do the bidding of those in control, who ruthlessly tried to stamp out the things they felt threatened by, in the hope of relieving what must have been their chronic, overwhelming fear of losing their power.

  Consider, for example, the Renaissance. Girolamo Savonarola resisted a new age of artistic, literary, and scientific freedom by smashing irreplaceable works of art and torching books with new ideas. Over a century later, Galileo Galilei was coerced to recant his innovative scientific theories by the pope. Most tragic of all, people who refused to conform were burned at the stake.

  The campus bullies who are now occupying the administration building, damaging property, and threatening me and the Collier Voice are retrogressing to the dark times in history. They're trying to use their muscle to smash us and destroy our free minds. Dean Folner needs to stop their outrageous, bullying behavior. He must call in the police and have the protestors removed. He must notify the Collier students involved in the protest that if they don't end their disgraceful behavior now, they will be expelled.

  We can't let a mob seize control of our university. It's the antithesis of what a university is supposed to stand for. The protestors pose a great danger—not only to me and the Voice, but to everyone. The rioters are staging a protest against thought itself. They are against anyone who doesn't think as they do. They want to smack down any students who think for themselves and reject being muscled by a mob.

  Kate's editorial resulted in her being summoned for another meeting with the dean. She took a seat facing him as he sat at his new desk in the science building's laboratory. A goose-neck faucet from a workstation sink arched behind his left shoulder. A plastic skeleton of the human body hung eerily from a stand behind his right shoulder.

  The latest edition of the Voice sat on his desk, opened to her column. "I assume there will be no retraction of your two columns, or will there?"

  He looked at her half-hoping, even now, that she would give in to his demand, immediately print a retraction of both of her recent columns, and spare him from having to make the hard choice between his conscience and—no, he mustn't think of his conscience as having anything to do with this. It's a clear-cut case of insubordination, he told himself. She's a reckless student defying me and her advisors.

  "Your new column makes it even harder to correct the situation, Ms. Taninger, but it's not too late to print a retraction. I'm giving you one last chance."

  Kate did not reply.

  "I'm bending over backward to be absolutely fair to you, Ms. Taninger."

  "If you want to be fair to me, then I shouldn't be here in the first place."

  "It's your choice. Either you print a retraction of your two ill-conceived columns and move on to other topics, or you will forfeit your position at the Voice."

  "That would be a choice between being true to my convictions and caving in to the bullies, Dean Folner."

  His habit of incessantly blinking made him look nervous.

  He said, "If that's what you think your choice is, you leave me no choice."

  "But, Dean Folner, I think you do have a choice. Don't you? You can call in the police to remove the protestors, and you can punish them instead of me."

  She sat calmly facing him while he cleared his throat and fidgeted in his chair. The dean apparently never had a JT in his life to guide his upbringing, as did Kate, who learned at an early age the importance of standing up for what she believed.

  "It would make you a champion of free speech for the students at Collier and for students like me in other schools who are the victims of bullies like the rioters here. If you stop them, you can be a role model for all campuses, and you can be our hero."

  The dean stared at her, astonished, as if equating his person with the term she used was like trying to mix water with oil. He chuffed. "You mean like in a fairy tale, I should be some kind of guardian angel?"

  "I had in mind a real-life hero," Kate said, standing her ground.

  He had the best advisors. None of them gave him this kind of advice. Who was she, a disorderly student, to council him?

  "I've had enough of your impertinence! You Taningers know no bounds!"

  "But Dean Folner, I don't mean to be impertinent," Kate said. Her manner was respectful, even if her advice was, at the least, unsolicited
. "You see, my grandfather Julius Taninger stood up to presidents when he thought they were wrong. He taught me to be true to what I believe." The youngest of JT's grandchildren, who freely gave advice at executive meetings of her family's corporation, thought nothing of speaking her mind to the dean. "Why would we appease an angry mob that invaded our campus and think they run things? You run things, not them, sir! Don't give in to them!"

  For an unguarded moment, the dean looked as if she might have reached him. His face softened at her plea. Honesty crept into his eyes. For the first time, the blinking slowed to a normal pace, and he looked directly at her.

  "Look, Kate, I don't want to punish you."

  He stood up as though he wanted to release some nervous energy. He walked to the lab's sole window. He glanced out worriedly.

  "They're out there," he said. "They're growing in numbers." He walked back to his desk, grabbed a document, and waved it at her. "This is their latest communique. They demand that I place limits on free expression on campus when a student expresses views that violate the moral standards of the university and offend the academic community."

  "But Dean Folner, those are just cheap shots by a couple of hundred students having a temper tantrum. They hardly even constitute a couple of percent of the student body. Exactly who is being offended by my views? Why wouldn't those who disagree simply avoid my column and read something else? What moral standards are they taking it upon themselves to enforce on the rest of us? The morality of storming buildings and damaging property? Their pathetic manifesto can be shot down so easily. Believe me, sir, their claims are so easy to debunk that you're in no danger at all if you shut them down! The protestors are only a small minority, so they have no right to claim they speak for the whole 'academic community.' And furthermore, it's absurd for them to claim that speech which offends someone must be shut down. Being offended isn't like having your wallet stolen or your leg broken. Speech is not physically harmful and can just be ignored. There is no such thing as a right to not be offended. For anything that anyone utters, you can surely find someone, somewhere, who will be offended by it. If that's their standard for shutting down speech—that it offends someone—then no one would be able to say anything. Think of it, sir! You can totally debunk their claims."

  "But they believe their opinions, just as you believe yours," he said flatly, as if he were reciting something he had read in a text book and was expected to believe. "Who am I to take a side?"

  "But occupying buildings and breaking windows aren't the expression of opinions, sir. Besides, you already have taken a side—theirs!"

  The dean looked confused. Somehow Kate had knocked him off guard.

  As he was considering how to reply, the door opened, and his assistant entered. "Excuse me, Dean Folner. I thought you should know that more protestors have just arrived in busloads. They're intent on blocking all the campus roads and entrances to the buildings so that no classes can take place today."

  The dean's shoulders stiffened. He nodded to his assistant, who then left. Kate observed him as he fidgeted with his tie. Whatever vestige of character she might have reached, whatever honesty she thought she saw in his eyes, had now vanished. The blinking resumed and seemed to deflect from his sight the full meaning of his actions.

  "I guess I have your answer, Ms. Taninger."

  "I guess I have yours, sir."

  "Effective immediately, you are removed as editor-in-chief of the Voice."

  Despite Kate's dismissal from the Voice as the protestors demanded, they did not end their demonstrations.

  "We kicked her out!" Sting, the ringleader, gloated on a phone call with the director of the Foundation to Enrich Student Life.

  "You made it look easy!" Jack Anders replied, elated.

  "We're on a roll!"

  "Why stop now? Let's score some bonus points with our political friends. Let's give 'em more than they asked for."

  "You bet!" said Sting. His voice soared beyond eagerness to the high octave of lust.

  The next day, the protestors' numbers again increased. They prowled the campus grounds, shouting, waving placards, blocking traffic, and preventing students from entering buildings. Watching the chaos from his laboratory window, Dean Folner squirmed. What the hell do they want now? He had given them what they wanted, so why was he still surrounded by dirty test tubes and smelly solvents while they refused to leave his real office?

  Presently, a new communique arrived. In the name of promoting justice, equality, and fairness, and putting an end to oppression, prejudice, and privilege, the protestors demanded that the university stop funding the Voice.

  Although no one could trace their origin, new signs and posters appeared among the malcontents.

  Defund Bigots! Defund the Voice!

  No Money for Oppressors. Shut Down the Voice!

  The signs were unavoidable—on lamp posts, at building entrances, in hallways, and in the waiting hands of the demonstrators as television cameras rolled.

  The protestors' latest demand triggered a flurry of discussions among the dean, the associate dean of student affairs, the faculty advisor for the Voice, and others. The student council called an emergency meeting that afternoon.

  One eager member of the student council opened the meeting. "Kate Taninger's columns are creating an unsafe learning environment on the Collier campus. Her views reflect a hatred of minorities and the poor, who are helped by the new election law that she speaks so forcefully against. So the question becomes, should the university be funding a publication that has now become an offensive symbol of privilege?"

  After some discussion, the student council of Collier University took a vote on whether the Voice—Collier's oldest and highly popular student newspaper—should continue to exist. The Voice lost. The council passed a resolution to recommend that the administration defund the publication.

  The dean and his administration approved the measure, and the Voice was silenced.

  An administration spokesperson issued a statement: "It's not only, or even primarily, the editorial positions taken by the Voice that caused us to rethink our support. We've been planning for a long time to better allocate our student activity funds, and as a cost-cutting measure, even though we're a large university that wanted to encourage a diversity of opinions, we find that we really don't need two major college-funded newspapers to do that."

  After the administration announced its decision, the council member who had initiated the vote against the Voice bragged to his friend, "See how easy it is to sway public opinion and make big changes?"

  His friend replied, admiringly, "You know, you should go into politics. You have a knack for it."

  "I know," replied the council member, who was the editor-in-chief of the Dispatch.

  His gloating, however, was short-lived. Before the day was over, the Voice was back in business, stronger than ever before.

  Laura Taninger heard the news and rescued the Voice by pledging a personal donation—with the condition that her money be earmarked only to support the Voice.

  "We're now in this together," Laura explained to Kate. "I'm not giving charity to my sister, although there would be nothing wrong with doing that. But in this case, I'm giving to a cause we both believe in." In acceptance and appreciation, Kate wrapped her arms around Laura, as she had when she was a child, and Laura returned the embrace, pulling Kate close and stroking her hair.

  "The Voice will continue to operate as we did before, with the same editor-in-chief and staff," the newspaper cheerfully announced. "Today's donation provides us with money to function independently of university funds, as well as to expand. We now have the resources for additional staffing, marketing, advertising, and distribution to increase our circulation and expand our readership on campus and in the Washington, DC, area beyond our university. The Voice is now stronger, and we will become more impactful on our community than ever before."

  Upon hearing of this change in fortune, the director of the Foundation to
Enrich Student Life called the ringleader of the Collier demonstrations.

  "What the hell's goin' on there?" Jack Anders snapped.

  "Big sister screwed us. Blame her!" said Sting.

  "We need more action, more disruptions, more demands—and more violence, if it comes to that."

  "We might be able to kick it up a notch," Sting teased. "Depends on what you're willing to pay."

  That night the demonstrators expanded their reach beyond the Collier campus, into the heart of the nation's capital. They blocked roadways, overturned a police car, shattered car windows, set wastebasket fires, hurled epithets, and threw bottles at police.

  Their ranks grew. Joining them were those students and local residents who uncritically accepted the vague slogans of the protestors and believed they were fighting for something worthy. Then there were those who joined the protestors because they needed to vent their undefined, yet powerful, frustrations by rebelling against something . . . anything. Others felt a driving need to release a pervasive, pent-up, dangerous lust for violence and were drawn to the protests as reflexively as a moth to light.

  Even more people came because they were paid. As workers in the past would roam the country seeking jobs, this new breed of workers roamed the country seeking protests. These job applicants offered themselves as kindling to those who hired them to set raging fires from the embers of discontent. That the arsonist-employers paid them with funds from untraceable sources to harm innocent victims was of no concern to the kind of workers who sought this employment.

  The ringleader at Collier passed his group's latest demand to Ronda Pendleton, the associate dean of student affairs, who passed it to Dean Folner. This demand excluded the group's previous grandiose claims about justice, equality, and other high-sounding terms. The communique was stripped to the essence of what the protestors wanted done, as if the recipient had already been softened up and did not need further rationalizations to be compliant. The communique amounted to an order contained in three handwritten words: Expel Kate Taninger.