The Devil and Webster

by Jean Hanff Korelitz

  That wasn’t going to be necessary, was it?

  Mrs. Bradford might have been of the old school, but she was oddly gifted with the particular technology of conference calls. Within a few minutes of the scheduled call, and after a minimum of adjustments and rebootings, she had everyone but young Wendy Lopez on the line, or online (Naomi wasn’t sure which): the board of trustees of Webster College, together in a part-actual, part-virtual conference room. She had to force herself not to entertain them all as they waited.

  “Can I just ask everyone to identify themselves?” Naomi said. This was for the record.

  One by one they did: Boston, California, New York, Walter Hammer on a hotel line in Paris. “Are you feeling better?” she asked Sally Roorbach in Houston. She and Sally had spoken at midnight, or thereabouts.

  “I am,” Sally croaked. “But bizarrely I sound worse. My daughter says I put her in mind of Lauren Bacall.”

  There was a bit of strange, disembodied laughing in the imaginary conference room. In the actual conference room, neither of the two physically present people laughed, or even smiled.

  “And Wendy Lopez is unable to join us,” Naomi noted.

  “I’m sure we shall muddle through without her,” Milton Russell said, though not precisely to her. He had embarked upon another pair of cookies, and chewed, disconcertingly, with his mouth partly open.

  Naomi, in response, gave a nod, though not precisely back to him, and somehow, in that small gesture of diverted hostility, an unrelated but highly relevant bit of truth punched its way into her skull and exploded.

  Mrs. Bradford might be efficiency itself, but she was not in a position to call and convene a meeting of the college’s trustees. Only a couple of people were capable of doing so, Naomi, of course, among them. But Naomi had not called for this meeting. She had given no instruction, made no suggestion. She had not even raised the possibility in any of her phone calls the previous night, and yet here she was, seated opposite her least favorite trustee and waiting for the official unpleasantness to begin. Wait a minute, she thought as the final trustees checked in. Frantically, she tried to process her pathetic little revelation: This meeting, the one that was happening right now—someone else had instigated it, and brought it about without her assistance. Also without her knowledge. And of course that meant something. And of course the something that it meant was not good. And all of this in a single wave as she sat, evading eye contact with Milton Russell and straining to differentiate the voices on the line.

  Later, Naomi could begin to understand how she’d been capable of such a neat bit of self-delusion, and the essence of it was this: She was…not…herself. She had been under assault for months, even before she’d recognized what was taking place as both personal and intentional: the slow unfolding of Webster Dissent, the blunt horror of the Sojourner Truth basement, which was both emotional and frankly sensory (the smell, she couldn’t seem to get rid of the memory of that), the knowledge that she was steadily running out of great ideas, not to mention the confidence they imbued. And then, more recently, had come the vertigo of rapidly unfolding events. The past hours, pockmarked with intense phone conversations and pallid sleep, and something that affected her even more deeply—a building sense that Hannah was present in everything Omar Khayal and Nicholas Gall were doing, even as she was increasingly not present in Naomi’s day-to-day life. She had failed to notice this transition as it happened, and now that it obviously had happened she was failing to pinpoint its onset. She was also finding it harder and harder to imagine that it would pass, or to conjure any other outcome but the one in which she would assume culpability for everything and stagger off in shame: Naomi Roth’s epic fail, from which she would be too tainted ever to recover, professionally or, yes, personally.

  “No one is blaming you,” said someone, and then someone else. Not in the room (of course not in the room; in the room Milton Russell absolutely was blaming her). It was from someone out there, in the virtual room. This did seem important, so she wrote it down (“No one is blaming you”), but even reading it on the page, in her own writing, didn’t make it true.

  “President Roth?” said Will Rennet. “If you could walk us through the situation with this student.”

  Naomi had her notes, but she didn’t need her notes. She summarized Omar’s failing marks and the suspicious A from Nicholas Gall, their email correspondence (if one-sided, unanswered emails could be considered “correspondence”), and cited the meeting he hadn’t shown up for, and the second attempt to get him in the room with herself and the dean of students. Omar had spoken to the press before the rescheduled meeting could take place, not that Naomi imagined for a moment he’d have shown up for that one, either. Technically, she explained, Omar Khayal had been neither expelled nor even suspended. “I even raised the possibility of a retroactive leave, which would have enabled him to nullify the past term’s GPA of one.”

  “Which is outrageous,” said Professor Russell. “Academic standards should not be rolled up like a carpet every time a student falls short of them. If this student can’t do his work he can give up his place or go away until he can appreciate a Webster education. Expectations are in the college handbook, and every single student receives the college handbook on matriculation. End of story.”

  If only it were, Naomi thought.

  “I have to say, I do agree,” said Lauren Bacall. “A one-point GPA is a pretty clear statement. Couldn’t we…I don’t know, pick the right media outlet and just explain that we had no choice?”

  “Why should we explain?” growled Professor Russell. He was looking balefully at Naomi, as if she’d been the one to speak. “Just state the facts. Why should we apologize because a student did no work and failed his classes? He didn’t meet our academic standards, and believe me, they are not difficult to meet if my final years on the faculty are any indication. I can tell you firsthand that Webster undergraduates have been squeaking by with negligible effort for decades. This kid is making a statement. He doesn’t want to be here. Ergo, he shouldn’t be here.”

  Never mind that, Naomi was thinking. She was still stuck on the very problematic phrase the right media outlet. What constituted “right” in this context? “Right” as in right wing? Professor Russell, it occurred to her, probably had an entire Rolodex full of “right” media outlets.

  “President Roth?” It was Will Rennet. “It’s a reasonable suggestion. Would you like to respond?”

  She took a breath. “Unfortunately, it’s a moot suggestion. Right outlet or not, we are just not permitted to speak about this publicly, let alone to the media. The academic discipline process is armored in confidentiality, as delineated in the college handbook. We can’t comment on Omar’s standing any more than we can make Nick Gall’s plagiarism public. The only thing we can say on either subject is that the process is confidential and we can’t discuss the committee’s decision. Last month I gave an interview to the Webster Daily and I said something completely banal about how tenure decisions were not taken lightly, and one of the group leaders then gave an interview about how the college was insinuating something nefarious or criminal, and how venal this was. That was a two-day story of its own, remember?”

  She wasn’t sure they remembered. She also hoped they weren’t aware that the group leader in question had been Hannah Roth.

  “But look,” a deep voice said, “I mean, how many journalists are circling this thing? And if just one of them had an understanding of what we were dealing with, with the plagiarism and the academic circumstances, then they would have to investigate. I realize they’re all in the kid’s corner right now, but nobody turns up their nose at this kind of information. There must be some way to convey our circumstances without making a public statement.”

  Naomi gazed, with some irritation, at her computer screen. She wasn’t sure who had spoken beyond its having been a male voice. The screen emitted silence. The man across the table was also, surprisingly, silent. Who are these people? she t
hought.

  “We are not doing that,” she said finally.

  “No, of course,” said a fully recognizable Will Rennet. Where had he been a few moments earlier? “No one is suggesting that we break confidentiality.”

  Not even the no one who’d just proposed exactly that? Naomi thought.

  “But it’s also true that we shouldn’t be held hostage by our own principles. Especially not if we’re being forced to respond to continual, intentional misinformation. There has to be a middle way.”

  “There isn’t one,” Naomi said curtly. She was feeling very martyr-y by now. She was marching off to prison with the Freedom Riders. She was lying down before the tanks in Tiananmen Square.

  “With respect,” she heard Lauren Bacall say, “however noble our individual principles on this subject may be, we’re also dealing with institutional principles, which are arguably even more important than anything we may believe as individuals. And the institution can’t speak for itself.”

  “I’ve spent the past twenty years persuading everyone I know that Webster has changed,” Walter Hammer broke in. “I tell them we’re not that right-wing, anti-intellectual Animal House they remember from Mom’s Snow Carnival visit or Dad’s away game on our campus. I’m so proud that my daughters’ Webster was a completely different place than the one I attended. And this—you know, I’m actually hearing from people about this. People are sending me news stories about the college and saying, basically, I thought you said things had changed. And I’m telling you, this is offensive to me.”

  “Well, what do you say to them?” said the other woman in Houston, the one who didn’t sound like Lauren Bacall.

  “I say, ‘There’s more that’s going on here. There’s a lot that isn’t in the media.’ And don’t worry, I know that’s as far as I can go. I’m not interested in getting sued or the college getting sued.”

  “We are getting sued,” said Russell. “According to my son, this student”—he pronounced student like a lower life-form—“is suing us.”

  “Threatening to sue,” said Naomi mildly.

  “It’s outrageous,” he nodded, as if she were agreeing with him.

  “If I may.” Lauren Bacall was interrupting. “I’m sure we’re all in agreement that President Roth has appropriately handled the situation. She’s had an open door from the beginning. She’s attempted to start a dialogue repeatedly. But we need to look at this with fresh eyes now. The Sojourner Truth House was a wake-up call that we’re not in control, and we need to be in control.”

  Professor Russell was tapping his present cookie against the tabletop, building a stockpile of ginger crumbs. “Finally, someone brave enough to state the obvious.”

  Naomi looked helplessly at the computer screen. After a moment, Will Rennet rescued her.

  “Professor Russell, forgive me, but I, for one, am failing to see the obvious. If you can enlighten us?”

  This was said with commendable restraint. Rennet had told her, more than once, that Milton Russell was the most inept and yet condescending professor he’d had at Webster.

  “Surely we all realize that Webster Dissent”—here he helpfully made quotation marks with his stubby fingers—“is responsible for the vandalism of that basement.”

  Naomi stared at him. For an odd moment she seemed to actually enter the virtual room. They were all there, the Webster College board of trustees, her collective employer, evenly spaced around a white round table, each person—curiously—with his or her hands splayed on the sleek tabletop. Every one of them looked stunned.

  Again, Rennet’s was the first voice she heard. “Speaking for myself, I certainly have not made that leap. In fact, I can’t see any reason whatsoever to make that leap.”

  “No, you wouldn’t,” Russell said, with the precise condescension his former student had described.

  “Professor Russell,” Naomi said, “there is nothing in the stated positions of this student group that would tolerate, let alone sponsor, what was done in the Sojourner Truth basement. To the extent that I understand what they’re doing, and I fully admit that I don’t understand the entirety of what they’re doing, we’re talking about diametrically opposed positions. The group has said repeatedly that they’re devastated about the incident. In fact, it’s part of their invective against the college that this crime could even take place at Webster.”

  “Exactly,” he huffed, maddeningly.

  “Can I just ask, Professor Russell,” said Lauren Bacall, “do you know something we don’t know? I would imagine, living so close to the college, perhaps you’re hearing things we’re not hearing. If people in the community are talking about what’s happening there, if there’s anything you’ve got that you could share…”

  “There is something I’ve got. It’s called a brain, and thank God I have one. These people, these protesters, they are not interested in ideas. They are not interested in dialogue. Our president can set up consciousness-raising sessions and heart-to-heart chats in the dean’s office till the cows come home, and they’re going to stand her up every time. The only thing they care about is reaction, and we are obliging them by reacting. All we’ve said to these people is ‘What can we do for you?’ How did we reward them for turning the Billings Lawn into a mud pit reminiscent of Woodstock? We gave them a fancy toilet that’s costing us a fortune! How can we make it up to them for not attending class or doing their academic work? Wipe the slate clean so their failing marks go away!” He was getting red as he spoke. Redder and tighter. He was a man well on his way to some kind of physical crisis. For a moment—a vile moment—it occurred to Naomi that she should just let him get on with it. “So here we’re running around apologizing to the world instead of clearing up this situation.”

  “Clearing up.” It was Will Rennet. Naomi didn’t have to see him to know that he was shaking his head.

  “Yes. Clearing the quad. If they want to passively resist, no problem. But they need to be removed. They’re breaking the law.”

  “Which law would that be?” said Rennet.

  “Trespassing, obviously. The Quad is Webster College property.”

  “And they are Webster students,” Naomi said, locating her own voice from beneath layers of stupefaction.

  “Not all of them. I think not most of them, at this point. And the ones who are aren’t attending classes, if Mr. Khayal’s grades are any indication. You may be apologizing to your friends about Webster, Mr. Hammer, but I am unwilling to apologize when I am in the right. Our only fault in this matter has been waiting for these highly unattractive young people to take responsibility for themselves, when they clearly have no interest in doing so. They are kicking up tantrums in our face and on our property, and we respond by handing over the reins to the entire university. Sure, go ahead and control how we’re perceived by the world. Hold the trustees hostage. Discourage young people from applying here and scare their parents out of letting them attend, if they get in. Why should they care? They’re out of here in four years with straight A’s in…I don’t know…Gender Queer Deconstruction, and they’ve got a job lined up making cupcakes. When my friends call up to ask me why the Webster grad they’ve hired in their office can’t write a memo, or doesn’t know what the Constitution says, and they want to know what the hell is going on up here, I’m not going to wring my hands because I’m not responsible for it. This…”—he gave himself a sputtery moment to locate the precise word—“debacle is the inevitable result of years of capitulation to liberal idiocy. It is patently not my fault.”

  Naomi, absurdly, looked at the computer screen, but no further rescue from that source seemed imminent. It would fall to her—and, she supposed, appropriately to her—to actually speak the inevitable response. Though her heart sank as she fed him his line: So whose fault is it?

  “This president,” he said, with who knew how many years of suppressed fury, “by her painfully misguided actions, is the prime mover of our present difficulties, and that this board apparently supports he
r, I cannot understand. If no one else is brave enough to put it into words, then I suppose I will have to do it. It wouldn’t be the first time. I hereby propose that President Roth voluntarily rescind the presidency in light of her complete inability to handle a crisis she has largely created.”

  Then he sat back in his chair, still red, still puffing, as if he had undertaken some athletic feat or—gruesome as this was for Naomi to imagine—managed to complete an act of copulation.

  No more cookies for you, she thought.

  Part V

  Shambles

  Chapter Fifteen

  Speaking Truth

  to Power

  Afterward nearly all of them phoned in again, individually, to reassure her. Russell had been way out of line. Russell was a token holdover, a reminder of how far Webster had come. Russell’s sole purpose on the board was to keep the rest of them ever vigilant, to ensure that the college did not return to what it had once been. It wasn’t that Naomi didn’t appreciate the gesture (or gestures). She was appreciative. She thanked them and did what she could to laugh it all off, but she had never been much of an actress. Basically what she really wanted, at least in the aftermath of that appalling conference call, was to yank the phone cord from the wall, shut and bolt the door, and have a massive pre-feminist girls-in-the-workplace cry. It was only the sight of Professor Milton Russell’s single uneaten cookie on its Webster crest china plate that stopped her.

  Bastard.

  Moron.

  Chauvinist.

  Mrs. Bradford brought in the mail, and Naomi did not miss her studious avoidance of eye contact. Had Russell been as loud as all that? Or had the entire meeting been monitored in the outer office? There’d been a call from the secretary of the alumni association, her assistant reported, and one from the Times Higher Education Supplement. Those were the important ones, anyway.