The Devil and Webster

by Jean Hanff Korelitz

  Eduardo Sombra, the only son of his grieving mother, had been killed in the crossfire between the Latin Kings and Los Solidos in Pope Park, a place you didn’t want to go walking at night, not if you knew anything about Hartford, Connecticut. His cousin Rafael had also been shot, as had four other young men, but all of these were either handcuffed to their beds in Hartford General or had been released to the custody of the police. At issue in this particular incident were half a kilogram of crack cocaine, two kilograms of powder cocaine, and ten pounds of marijuana: a very normal subject of dispute in Pope Park and the surrounding neighborhood, where Eduardo had spent his entire life before arriving at Webster. He had been a bright boy who loved to read books; this she gleaned from an obituary posted on the website of the Hartford Courant. He had played baseball on a local team, and spent summers working in the bodega of an uncle, Luis Aritza. He left behind a mother, Dolores Sombra; a sister, Luz Sombra; and many cousins in the Hartford area. At the time of his death, the obituary noted, Eduardo Sombra had been attending college out of state.

  It was a waste, of course—a terrible waste. That went without saying. But there were other things that could be said, that someone ought to say, like the fact that it was also a lie and a crime and a crazy sad story. Eduardo, at the end of the day, had fooled everyone, including hundreds of young people who cared deeply about him—as Naomi, truthfully, had not. She thought of all those open-hearted kids in the parlor of Sojourner Truth House, gazing up at him, adoring him, wanting to comfort him and do meaningful things in tribute to him. She thought of how the cameras had loved him and the microphones had loved him, and how his story—his story—had inspired so many people.

  The little boy who’d been shot in the Gaza Strip that day, sixteen years earlier, had had many siblings, according to Wikipedia. His father had survived.

  The American who worked for an NGO, foster homes in Wisconsin and Texas, the public library in Arkoma, Oklahoma, where Omar had read about Webster College, so far away in the green forest of central Massachusetts, and sent out his humble request to join its welcoming community of scholars, artists, and activists—where had any of it come from? And did the fact that none of it was true mean that Webster was somehow also untrue? Or otherwise diminished?

  Around and around she went, baffled and bitter and disconsolate, but she couldn’t make sense of it. Eventually she realized there was no point in continuing to try.

  The media trucks had returned, but this time there was no encampment of young people, eager to speak. Sojourner Truth House was now occupied solely by its legitimate tenants, and even Nicholas Gall seemed to have gone quiet. Perhaps this sudden dearth of interview subjects and the lack of an obvious person to blame had an impact on what happened next, as the story, slowly, then quickly, began to turn in an entirely new direction. If Omar—Eduardo—himself could not be made to answer for his subterfuge, then someone else must be responsible. The college, yes, but in particular its admissions office, which had given this con artist a place at one of the most competitive institutions in the country, in addition to a full-ride scholarship, thereby depriving an applicant who had not lied about every single thing in his application. This was a crime, obviously. And like any other crime, someone must have committed it.

  Suddenly no one wanted to speak with Naomi Roth, the college president. Now the only interview anyone wanted was with Francine Rigor, Webster’s dean of admissions, and they weren’t bothering to go through the press office, and the callers were worse than the worst of the rejected applicants’ parents, Francine reported. She had no idea what to do with them. People were turning up on campus tours and in Q&A sessions with her staff, asking for comments from anyone who could be made to sound like an official admissions office source. In the meantime, an ancillary story about elite colleges not bothering to confirm the credentials of applicants was swallowing up the entire affair.

  Still, Naomi sat tight, and she advised her friend to do the same, assuming that in time the strange case of Omar Khayal would metamorphose again, and this time set off in an entirely different direction: psychopathology in teenagers, the effect of violent communities on high school students, the seductive iconography of the Palestinian experience and rhetoric…who knew what it would be? But then Milton Russell wrote an email to the Webster board, expressing the strongly held belief that Dean Rigor should step down immediately, given the fact that her office had admitted and awarded a full scholarship to an applicant with shockingly dubious credentials, which she had not seen fit to check.

  When Naomi saw that, she called the college attorney into her office.

  It was decided that the two of them, Naomi and Francine, should hold a press conference the next day, in the admissions office lounge in Service Hall.

  “And may I ask why, after months of not talking to the press, we’re suddenly holding a press conference?” Naomi asked. “I thought we were meant to be silent and dignified.”

  “Silent and dignified is usually a good policy,” said Chaim Wachsberger, “but what really matters here is that we state and uphold college policy. Before, the issue was the confidentiality of the tenure process, but this is general admissions policy we’re discussing now, not private information. I’m assuming that Harvard or Columbia or Podunk wouldn’t have been any more likely to catch the fabrications in Mr. Khayal’s application. It seems obvious to me, but apparently this is something that has to be explained to people, so we’ll take this opportunity to explain it.”

  After he’d gone, and she was through with her phone call to Francine, Mrs. Bradford knocked gently at her office door and came in with a letter. “I’m not sure what do with this,” she said, handing it over. She looked up at the painting the art museum had sent over: Webster College in 1788, three of the original buildings, the green that would eventually become the Billings Lawn, and overhead the massive elm trees. “It’s such a shame about your quilt,” she said. “I did like that quilt.”

  “Yes,” Naomi agreed. “It was beautiful.”

  “Was it from your family? I never asked.”

  “No.” She smiled briefly at the thought of her mother, Rachelle, or her grandmother, Judith. Neither of these women had been terribly domestic. She could not remember either one of them holding a needle. “It was from a business I once ran in New Hampshire. A group of local women making quilts and embroidering things. It was a mail-order business. Remember mail order?”

  “Of course I do. I still get my socks from the Vermont Country Store catalogue.”

  “That’s a fun one,” Naomi agreed. “We’re doing a press conference tomorrow afternoon, in the admissions lounge. FYI.”

  Mrs. Bradford nodded. “I’ll give Leanne a call and see if they need anything from us.”

  Once she’d left, Naomi sat in her new chair (in truth, all but identical to the old) and looked at the wall where her old Drunkard’s Path quilt had hung. The women who’d sewn it came roaring back to her, more clear, more sharp than before the fire, before the textile itself had been reduced to char. Their names and stories and grievances, the childish ways they had made one another suffer, even as they’d sat together and joined their hands to create something as illogical and lovely as a patchwork quilt. She wondered which of them were still alive and which were dead, marveling again at the fact that she had only removed herself by a distance of a couple of hours, and still she had never gone back. The quilt had kept them all with her, she realized now, and she was glad it had burned up.

  The envelope in her hands was addressed to Naomi Roth, Billings Hall, Webster College, Webster, Massachusetts, and was from the bursar of Stanford University. It contained a tuition bill. She sat with it for a long while, then she took out her cell phone, photographed the bill, and texted the picture to Hannah with a single question mark. That was about as much as she could handle. It wasn’t today’s problem, maybe not even tomorrow’s. She had to get through the press conference first.

  The following afternoon they opened the
lounge to the media-credentialed curious. Naomi and Francine took two wing chairs at the far end of the room and sat, doing a final pass on the statement Francine had prepared and waiting for the room to fill. Speaking before crowds was a part of Francine’s job, and she did it well, but Naomi knew she didn’t exactly enjoy being in front of people. School visits, alumni gatherings, and NACAC conferences—she gave off a relaxed but slightly geeky affect and did what she could to avoid personal encounters, the bane of many an admissions officer. She had dressed, for this occasion, in a quiet brown suit offset with a gold circle pin, and brown leather boots that might have shown very little of the leg of a shorter woman, but given Francine’s height revealed the knee and several inches below it. She was fidgeting with her watch as Naomi read the statement again.

  “It’s going to be fine,” Naomi said quietly.

  “No, I know. It’s just, we hate to get caught out like this. I mean, as it says in the statement, it does happen. It happened at Harvard and Yale and it happened at Princeton. Probably many other cases we don’t know about.”

  “And you’re telling them that,” Naomi said.

  “But I mean, now they’ll say it happened at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, and Webster. Makes me mad.”

  Naomi looked at her. “All right, but…mad for later. Sad for today. This is sad. Remember what Chaim said.”

  Chaim had said that they were not to be led too far from the fact that someone, a young person, was dead. And if it got heated, they were supposed to remind people of that: It was a tragedy. Nothing else was relevant.

  “Okay.” She nodded, looking glum.

  “It’s going to be fine,” Naomi said.

  “You said that already,” said Francine testily, and it was the testiness that made Naomi remember the other conversation, the one in the student center. Neither of them had raised the subject again since that night, but now Naomi did.

  “How is Sumner? Did his situation get resolved? The one you told me about?”

  “Oh. Yes.” Francine was watching the people come in. The space had been designed for prospective applicants and their parents, to look over the school catalogue and various Webster publications as they waited for their tours or interviews. The walls bore gleaming photographs of Billings Hall, the modern student center, the chapel, the boathouse on the lake. There was even an artful study of the Stump, looking—to anyone who didn’t understand its Websterian significance—merely like any other stump in the world. On the far end of the room, outside the double doors that led to Francine’s office, was the desk of Leanne Gall, Francine’s assistant and the unfortunate wife of Nicholas Gall. She’d been no warmer to Naomi on this occasion, but now, of course, Naomi understood why. The two women, after a mutually frosty nod of greeting, had not looked at each other. “The board met,” Francine said. “They renewed his contract for another two years. He’ll retire then.”

  “Two years!” Naomi said. “That’s wonderful news. He must be very relieved. You both must be.”

  Francine nodded. “Yes, it’s a relief.”

  “You were so worried. I was sure it would be fine. Sumner is so devoted to Hawthorne. They’d be crazy to lose him.”

  “Should we start?” Francine said abruptly. “I think we should start.”

  Naomi looked at her. “All right,” she agreed. “So, I go first, then you, then questions.”

  “I hate this dress,” said Francine.

  Then why did you wear it? she thought, before she could stop herself.

  “No, you look really nice,” she said instead.

  Naomi got to her feet and spoke briefly. The entire Webster community was grappling with this student’s sudden death and all of its implications. Obviously, the person they had known and respected as Omar Khayal had hidden much from the college and from his friends at Webster, and it was understandable that questions should have arisen. She and Dean Rigor would be happy to respond to those questions insofar as they did not violate the privacy of this or any other Webster student, or member of the community. But first Dean Rigor would read a statement.

  Francine did not get up. She read from her chair, without looking at the men and women in the lounge or reacting to any of the cameras.

  “First,” she began, “we want to extend our profound sympathy to the family and friends of the student who died a few days ago in Hartford, Connecticut. We knew him as Omar, and we respected him as a gifted student and a kind and bright young man. I personally had a number of conversations with him when he first arrived at Webster, and I had very warm feelings for him.

  “Given what we now know about Omar,” Francine continued, “naturally I have gone back and reviewed the application he submitted two and a half years ago, and when I did, I could only conclude that I’d be inclined to admit anyone who submitted such an application. Of course you’re wondering why I couldn’t tell that the essay was fiction, and that the entire persona Omar created in his application was fraudulent. I suppose I might have if Webster had an entire department of investigators, evaluating every application. We don’t, and neither does any other college in the world. Not only would that necessitate an application fee of several hundred dollars, it would also send the message that we don’t trust the students who fill out those applications, the teachers and counselors who write recommendations, or the schools that send transcripts. That is not the world we live in, and it’s not the world we want to live in.

  “Having said that, if something in an application jumps out at us, we might follow up with a phone call to a guidance counselor, but otherwise it’s rare that we would verify a grade or check something a student’s essay or recommendation has referenced. Like most American colleges, Webster has an honor code, and because our relationship with the student begins with the application we consider that code to be in effect. In other words: We trust our applicants. That is our philosophy, and while it won’t protect us from an applicant who sets out to be deceitful, it reflects our own principles, and the kind of academic environment we choose to create here at Webster.

  “With this incident, Webster joins the list of colleges who have been defrauded in this way. Because while the vast majority of our applicants are honest and principled, there will always be people who prefer to mislead and obscure. We will never be entirely able to prevent this behavior, or even to identify it. But we’ll continue to evaluate applicants to Webster according to our own integrity.

  “Once again, we are deeply saddened by what has happened to Omar, because whatever else he may or may not have been, he was a human being and a member of our community.

  “Now, if anyone has questions for either of us.”

  They only wanted to talk to Francine, though. Maybe they were like everyone else in America, eager to grill the dean of admissions of a highly selective college while she, more or less, couldn’t refuse. They went for her, at least as avidly as any proud parents at a cocktail party who found themselves suddenly introduced to an Ivy League gatekeeper. Naomi, half amused, half relieved, sat in her wing chair, listening to her friend field the expected questions. Would the college change its procedures to prevent another “Omar” slipping through? What would have happened if “Omar’s” deceptions had been discovered while he was still enrolled at Webster—would he have been expelled? What message did it send to potential applicants when someone could make up an ideal candidate out of whole cloth and do an end run around legitimate and truthful kids?

  “He claimed to be the brother of a Palestinian boy who was murdered in the Gaza Strip, an incident that was photographed and seen all over the world. You didn’t even attempt to verify that?” said a woman in the back. She was having some difficulty keeping the umbrage from her voice.

  Francine looked at her mildly. “Neither did you,” she answered. “And last time I checked, verifying a story was something journalists actually were expected to do. As far as I’m aware, not one of the writers or broadcasters who interviewed Omar did basic fact checking on the person they w
ere talking to. Besides, Omar was very vague in his application essay when it came to this incident. He alluded to something traumatic that happened to his father and brother, but didn’t include specifics. Those details”—she smiled sadly—“seem to have been…added later.”

  “As was the incident in which he declined to participate in terrorist activities,” Naomi chimed in. She wanted that on the record, too.

  They had more for Francine, of course. How much of a scholarship had Omar received? Was there an institutional bias toward students who claimed oppression by Israel, and would she please share her personal views on the Middle East conflict? Did Webster College welcome returning veterans and make any concession for their service? They drilled on like a chorus of jackhammers.

  Naomi was proud of Francine, who never lost her cool, not even when the questions had already been addressed in her statement. Her friend was nailing it, and why not? She’d done nothing wrong and had nothing to hide.

  “President Roth?” It was a young woman up front. Not college young, but young. “A question for you? This situation with Eduardo Sombra wasn’t the only allegation of dishonesty Webster has been dealing with this year. A couple of months ago a source close to your board of trustees gave an interview in which he suggested that an African-American professor who’d been denied tenure was guilty of plagiarism. Are you concerned that, between these two incidents, one involving a student and the other involving a faculty member, Webster is going to become known for academic transgression?”

  Naomi’s eyes had gone instantly to Leanne Gall, but she made herself look away. She did not want to answer this question at all, and especially not with Nicholas Gall’s wife looking on. But she couldn’t see how to get out of it.