Collective Intelligence

by Harry Marku

slightly taken aback. For some reason he noticed that her spectacles were a tad fashionable. He suppressed a frown. “He changed his answers after grading. We took images of the students' test following...”

  “Is that standard policy?” she interrupted him.

  “In a limited sense I'm afraid it's become so.”

  “That's hardly an attitude of trust.”

  “No, it's one of experience.”

  Several members of the Board raised their eyebrows and glanced at each other. Jankowiak could not fail to notice his unintentional faux pas.

  “You take images of all the students' tests?” Her voice carried an extra measure of grit.

  “No, only those the TA has identified as behaving suspiciously.”

  “That's a rather broad sweep.” She challenged.” Explain.”

  “A proctoring TA is responsible to prevent student cheating—such as checking their electronics or looking over at each other—and to inform when incidences occur.”

  “You allow electronics in the exam room?” She ignored the latter part of his explanation.

  “It's expressly allowed in the Student Handbook.” Jankowiak wisely refused to test the sanity in that policy.

  “As it should.” She said quickly “Why was this student under scrutiny?”

  Jankowiak paused. He was confused. He'd been called to the Board to discuss a case of academic cheating but he felt accused. The speaking member of the Board appeared to be thoroughly ignorant of the purpose of his visit.

  “Please continue, Dr. Jankowiak.” She prodded.

  Jankowiak continued. “The TA suspected that this student had changed answers on a previous test...”

  “Changed answers?”

  “It was a similar event. After receiving his graded test, the student later returned it for re-grading. Incorrect answers had been erased and were replaced with the correct ones. It was obvious. There were pencil marks and erasure scrubs over grading marks.”

  “What did the TA do?”

  “Upon my direction, he gave the student the benefit of the doubt and boosted his score.”

  “Did you advise him to take an image of the next exam?”

  “It was a reasonable 'next course' of action.”

  “Was it?” Again her inflection accused Jankowiak.

  Jankowiak was ready. “The Student Handbook expressly forbids cheating.”

  A new Board member spoke. He looked anything but the prototypical academic. He wore a tan and brown checkered blazer over an open collar dress shirt with sleeves that were folded rather than cuffed. His hair was dyed jet black and pulled back over his head in thick waves. There were no glasses to encumber his face. He seemed friendly, for he had a face which permanently smiled, and his voice was even-toned and harmless.

  “I have here a copy of that course's Syllabus.” He held it up to his fellow members. “There is nothing in the re-grading policy that prohibits changing answers.”

  “Excuse me?“ Jankowiak was dismayed. “This is a matter of commonly understood ethics.”

  “Of course it is,” the man interrupted smoothly. “It is inconceivable that a professor would apply a penalty for something he had not first defined.”

  Jankowiak was stunned. “A... A syllabus is a class outline, not a legal and ethics document,” he stammered.

  “Are you questioning the Board?” The man's said sharply. His question hung in the room.

  In the stony silence Jankowiak weighed the Board. The balance of its members were either staring at him or had become contemplatively disengaged. He braced for the outcome. Though their decision was not in his favor, he would not surrender without one last statement for the record. He chose his words carefully, “We have documented evidence that this student re-submitted an altered paper for regrading...”

  “... and the Board has established that you failed to provide the proper guidelines to define that as misconduct. Furthermore, this a matter that should easily have been addressed at the Department level. However, the Board is well aware of your ongoing interpersonal issues with the Department Chair. For that failure, and for your punitive methods in this matter, it is the Board's decision to place your tenure in a probationary state, Dr. Jankowiak. We will review again in six months.”

  Year 12

  Concessions

  After twenty-four months of subpoenas, stays, dates and deliberations, Jankowiak's criminal trial ended in his favor.

  If Jankowiak expected that exoneration would accompany acquittal it was a naive hope. Instead, the assault on his character continued: Elliot Hampden immediately protested that the “not-guilty” criminal verdict was really the failure of a liberally-biased court which refused to consider all the evidence and that disallowed truths would have changed the outcome. In voicing GenCorp's displeasure, Hampden laid the groundwork to rework the case through civil court—where a damage verdict would be within GenCorp's reach.

  Jankowiak had been beaten down. He had defended himself against charges which proved far more damning in presentation than in verdict. Bridges with his fellow Faculty and colleagues had been irreparably torched. Under the onslaught of doubt, he'd lost the battle to preserve his professional integrity.

  Though not allowed to speak openly, the jury saw circumstances differently than Hampden. There could be no criminal conviction because the Police's computer forensics eventually yielded the possibility that Jankowiak's computer had been hacked. Neither could Jankowiak obtain retribution against the arresting officers. His arrest had been an unfortunate but reasonable outcome during the pace of the investigation.

  To a man the Jury agreed that that the so-called evidence had been planted, probably by GenCorp, onto Jankowiak's computer. But that was the extent of what they could consider; the computer evidence was summarily disallowed when the details of Jankowiak's detainment and the timing of his Miranda Rights reading came to light.

  It was a victory with a legacy cost—Jankowiak's legal team failed to prove that GenCorp was the provoking agent. The legal dismissal gave GenCorp ample time to destroy whatever evidence might have existed.

  Jankowiak did earn the Twelve's sympathy as it was brutally obvious that GenCorp had legally sought to mug him for control of his patents.

  Following the trial, Shapner and Hampden dominated the interviews, effectively muzzling Jankowiak anew.

  “Unfortunate technicalities stood in the way of justice.” Shapner had said. “The court could not convict when key evidence was dismissed.”

  “Will you address your complaints against the Police Department?” A reporter had asked.

  “We will evaluate our position and consider all options,” Hampden had answered. “Some things, however, are beyond our control. What's done is done. Heinous procedural mistakes cannot be undone.”

  Shapner showed more grace. “More importantly, the leak of GenCorp's proprietary work was sealed.”

  Big Brother

  “Could you tell me where to find Dr. Jankowiak's office?” A man respectably dressed in a modest three-piece business suit queried to no one in particular as the between-classes student traffic surged through a University corridor.

  With regret, Ryan broke off his hallway conversation with a fawning coed to address the stranger.

  This is too familiar. He sensed the surreal pang of deva vu as he approached the visitor.

  The man had halted midstream in the corridor, unable or unwilling to challenge the wave of students that parted and flowed around him.

  “Do you have an appointment?” Ryan was in his fifth and final year of graduate study under Jankowiak's tutelage. His thesis defense was only weeks away.

  “Of course but I was hoping to talk with you as well.” The man surprised him. “You are Ryan I presume?”

  It was disconcerting to Ryan to be known by anyone outside of the limits of the academic community.

  “Yes,” he said cautiously.

  “Paul Pawluk,” the man introduced himself, extending a card with his han
d.

  Ryan took the card and gave it a quick glance. He immediately recognized the logo of Pawluk's employer as a government lab.

  Pawluk continued his invitation.

  “I'd like to talk to you later regarding your future plans. We have an opportunity that may be of interest.”

  “I'd like to hear it,” Ryan said politely, not letting on that Jankowiak was finalizing details with the University's Business Incubator Division to take the gaming product into the commercial arena. After graduation, Ryan would be one of the principals.

  For Ryan, and his student colleagues, the previous two years had passed with considerable concern. Though Jankowiak had labored long hours to obtain grant money during his legal defense, he simply could not keep pace. Money had run thin. Some of Ryan's student colleagues had bolted to other groups and some to other schools.

  For his part, Ryan had developed the art of securing grants from funding agencies like the NSF and DARPA—sufficient to cover his final two years—but not enough to underwrite the stipends and tuition for his fellow grad students.

  With reluctance, the University had provided sufficient seed money to keep Jankowiak's research program afloat. Ryan knew the support had come with a political cost, the unfair postulation that it was preventing a new faculty hire. He did not know about the loss of proposed funding for a new building that was also being blamed on Jankowiak.

  It was obvious that relations with competing faculty had soured. Some blamed him for their own funding shortfalls, alleging that Jankowiak's battle with GenCorp, and the University's decision to retain him on the Faculty was, by