Looking back over my journal, I see that events of my first week in San Jose pretty much foreshadowed the shape of things to come.
NOTES FROM JOURNAL, SEPTEMBER 24TH
Arrived in a state of high nerves to take up lodgings in the Faculty Club—classes begin tomorrow. Checking in at Prof. Mitford’s mailbox, I found assorted sociological memoranda and announcements, copies of the student newspaper Spartan Daily full of wise sayings of deans and information about parking regulations, a penciled note from the secretary of the department saying “Miss Mitford, please go to personnel to take the loyalty oath and be fingerprinted” which I threw straight into the wastepaper basket, and—joy of unanticipated joys!— a letter from a local funeral director saying he had read in the papers that I was coming to teach in San Jose and would “be pleased to put my staff at your disposal to tell your students how we care for the dead.” My class outlines are ready, all neatly dittoed. To my annoyance, Somebody Up There has ordered the title “Techniques of Muckraking” deleted from the seminar outline and replaced with “Sociology 196H,” which sounds boring as hell, so they all had to be redone with the title put back in. Novelle, who is good at ferreting out campus politics, discovered that the order to strike the muckraking had come from Chancellor Dumke’s office.
Some women faculty members took me and Novelle out to lunch in San Jose’s finest eatery—nerves much assuaged by their kindness and several preprandial drinks. In mid-lunch two men came over to our table: a dean, and a spruce young fellow, something like a composite of the junior Watergate set we’d seen on television, who introduced himself as lawyer for the university trustees. I said oh good, I need a lawyer, I just got this absurd note about a loyalty oath and fingerprinting, there’s not a word about either in my contract, so please tell your bosses, whoever they are, to cut out the one-line jokes as I don’t intend to do any of that. He replied sternly that it’s a rule, I would have to comply with these requirements. The dean, looking grave, concurred. “Then ... see you in court!” said I gaily, and on this note we parted.
SEPTEMBER 25TH
My first lecture—at last I’ve found my true vocation! There were over two hundred students, ranging from fresh-faced late teens to grizzled heads; I loved them on sight. All nerves vanished, I gave them a brief rundown on How I Came to Be a Distinguished Professor (throwing myself on their mercy), and a short intro. to funerals, throwing in all the jokes I could think of about different layaway plans and how one wouldn’t be caught dead in one of the cheaper lines of caskets, showed samples of the Fit-a-Fut Oxford that I’d ordered from the Practical Burial Footwear Company of Columbus, Ohio, passed round copies of my favorite trade mags. Mortuary Management and Casket & Sunnyside, explained the uses of various embalmers’ aids like the Natural Expression Former (a plastic device which, inserted into the mouth after rig-mo, as we call it in the trade, sets in, can produce a seraphic smile on the deceased face).... It all went off like gangbusters, they were in fits of laughter.
The university public relations office telephoned in the afternoon to say they would be having a press conference to announce my appointment as Dist. Prof., which I thought incredibly cordial of them; and one of the deans called to warn me that the loyalty oath and fingerprinting are ironclad conditions of employment, so I’d better get along to personnel to comply with these. I stiffly replied that I should be consulting the American Civil Liberties Union about that.
SEPTEMBER 26TH
My muckraking seminar, limited to twenty, is a very different cup of tea from the lecture course. Three of the students, it turns out, are not enrolled in the university, hence are attending illegally, which I find flattering. We’ve decided to meet in the Faculty Club (also, no doubt, illegal, who knows?) where we can have lunch and bring wine to enliven the three and a half hours of class time. My plan: to spend the first several sessions exploring methods of gathering information, which will give everyone time to figure out what particular muckraking project each wishes to pursue. Today, discussed techniques I’ve found useful in interviewing funeral directors, prison administrators, Famous Writers, and so on—how to get them to talk, how to assume various fictional identities to help loosen tongues: pre-need cemetery-plot buyer? Nervous citizen anxious about crime control and prison security? Aspirant Famous Writers School student? And how to double-check information thus adduced by seeking out those on the receiving end, so to speak: survivors who have had to foot the funeral bill, convicts, students actually enrolled in the Famous Writers School....
Another deanish telephone call: Had I gone down to personnel yet? I explained I hadn’t time to think about all that or to consult the ACLU, I’d been too busy preparing my classes and meeting with students, so the oath and fingerprint matters had rather slipped my mind. Professor Alvin Rudoff, head of the sociology department, called to say there is a big flurry going on in the administration about all this, and they’ve been after him to persuade me to comply. He agrees both requirements are absurd and demeaning. I said I’d be back in touch after talking with some lawyers.
OCTOBER 2ND
The two funeral directors came to address my lecture class—they were more than up to expectations. “We are in the business of serving people,” one announced mournfully, and averred that all this talk of the high cost of dying is nonsense—they would furnish a funeral for as little as $119.50. This sounded like an odd price, and the students demanded a breakdown; the information that the actual price is $117 and the $2.50 for sales tax was greeted with gales of hilarity. A long wrangle ensued between students and guest lecturers about the wholesale cost of caskets—why is it a closely held trade secret? Our undertakers fumbled and fudged over this one, with students in hot pursuit. Novelle’s Roarometer, a device she proposes to invent to measure decibels of laughter in my classroom, would have been wagging its head off during this interchange.
Teaching, then, was heady stuff; so was the fracas over the loyalty oath and fingerprinting that began to build up between me and the college administration. To be perfectly truthful about this, I believe that had these requirements been explicitly set forth in my original dealings with the university, I might after some grumbling have complied; for are we not all inured to such bureaucratic absurdities in myriad aspects of life, from obtaining a driving license to applying for a government job? And what of my colleagues, professional teachers whom I had learned to respect as men and women of principle, and their thousands of counterparts in the state university system—who was I to set myself up as some sort of political purist and initiate a challenge when they had not seen fit to do so? Nor was I seeking, as was later charged, a “confrontation”—I had been through enough of those in my time, and yearned only to be left in peace, taken up as I was with the rigorous requirements of my new job. Yet, having stumbled into this arena, I was reluctant to withdraw. Thus the warp and woof of my days in San Jose consisted of trying to learn more about the mysterious, fascinating process of teaching, and locking horns with the authorities in a series of ever-increasing skirmishes.
The first of these had to do with the loyalty oath. There is something weird about the wording of the California Oath of Allegiance; although extremely brief, it manages to encompass a number of bewildering and contradictory propositions. If it reads like a truncated version of something, this may be because in the middle sixties the ACLU, after arduous battle, succeeded in excising the most objectionable portion, that which required all state employees to swear that they are not now nor ever have been. As it now stands, one must swear to “uphold and defend” the Constitutions of the United States and California “against all enemies foreign and domestic,” and further to swear that the oath was taken “freely and without any mental reservation.” Well (said I to the deans), I think I have done my best to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States against enemies, especially domestic ones like you; but the annotated Constitution of the State of California runs to three hefty volumes and covers all manner of subject
s. Do I uphold and defend, for example, Article 4, Section 25¾, limiting boxing and wrestling matches to fifteen rounds? I don’t know. Perhaps it should be fourteen, or sixteen? I do know that I cannot uphold and defend the recent amendment which reinstates the death penalty, since in my view it runs counter to the U.S. Constitution’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. Nor can I uphold and defend the section requiring the loyalty oath, which I regard as an abridgment of First Amendment rights. But (said they) you must sign if you want to work here, it’s the law. What if I strike out the words “freely and without any mental reservation” and substitute “under duress”? No, that won’t do, you can’t tamper with the oath. Then ... you are requiring me to swear falsely as a condition of employment?
The section of the Penal Code giving the penalty for perjury, one to fourteen years in state prison, is printed right above the oath. But the same Penal Code would seem to contain an equally stiff caveat for university administrators who require employees to perjure themselves as a condition of employment: subornation of perjury also carries a penalty of one to fourteen years in stir.... What, then, if we all end up behind bars as a consequence of my signing? Will it be a race between me and the administrators to see who is rehabilitated first?
We went round and round on this for several days. Eventually I consulted Paul Halvonik, counsel for the ACLU. He advised that since the Oath of Allegiance is a requirement built into the California Constitution, it would take a deal of toppling in court; it might be years before such litigation would be resolved. Meanwhile, refusal to sign would be cause for my immediate dismissal, an event that would doubtless be hailed with unalloyed glee by the trustees. It boiled down to a choice, then, between continuing to teach or being fired and embarking on an interminable court fight over the oath. Why not sign, making it clear I was doing so under protest? Fingerprinting is another matter, said Halvonik; it is not a constitutional requirement, we could probably win that one.
I had not yet broached the oath matter to my classes—we were far too busy with funerals, Famous Writers, and related subjects —but I discussed it at length with Novelle and Professor Rudoff, who agreed with Halvonik’s approach; so on Monday, October 1st (a date that later was to become significant), I went to the personnel office and signed. The previously scheduled press conference to announce my appointment was held a couple of days later; it was surprisingly well attended by TV, all the local press, even stringers from New York and London papers. I took the occasion (to the consternation of the university P.R. people who had called the conference) to explain my position on the loyalty oath and to denounce the perjury-suborning administration.
There followed a few days of press hoopla. The Spartan Daily, to my gratification, published two pages of letters from faculty members supporting my attack on the oath requirement; then it all subsided, and with some relief I settled back into my new occupation. But somehow, in the process of clarifying my position on the loyalty oath, I had forgotten all about the fingerprinting. It was soon brought sharply back to my attention.
NOTES FROM JOURNAL, OCTOBER 10TH
My horoscope in today’s paper says “Higher-ups may cause problems ... do not overspend ... rely more on colleagues ... p.m., enjoy social activity, relax with mate.” It turned out to be pretty accurate. The deans were after me all last week to come in for a discussion of the fingerprinting issue, but since the whole thing seems to have turned dead serious and they are holding up my paycheck, I said I would have to wait until I could get a lawyer to accompany me to the meeting. Today was kaleidoscopic: a book report which I’d been asked to give at a noon faculty luncheon, the meeting with the deans, an afternoon reception given for me by women faculty members.
Following the book report, I braced the assembled professors with a brief polemic on fingerprinting: an arbitrary, demeaning rule promulgated by the chancellor, part of a general policy of Big Brotherism, the dossier-building process through which our life histories can all be stored eventually in giant computers; was much fortified by their expressions of agreement and support.
Bob [Treuhaft, my husband, who is a lawyer] came down from Oakland and together with Novelle and Professor Rudoff we breached the deanly stronghold in the administration building, there to confront the massed deans: Dr. Hobart Burns, Academic Vice-President; Dr. James Sawrey, Dean of School of Social Sciences; Dr. Robert Sasseen, Dean of Faculty. With one accord, these worthies pronounced themselves opposed in principle to the fingerprinting requirement—they even commended me for bringing the issue to their attention. But, I must comply at once or leave the campus. “Then ... you mean to tell me that you support my stand, but you are firing me for refusing to be fingerprinted?” I asked in some astonishment. With one accord, they glumly nodded assent.
Novelle and Professor Rudoff pleaded the cause of my students, who would be subjected to real hardship: we were now three weeks into the semester, books had been bought, projects and assignments undertaken —some two hundred and twenty students would be faced with the prospect of losing credits for my courses, some might fail to graduate as a consequence, others would lose grants.
We proffered some face-saving compromises. Professor Rudoff proposed to invite me out for a drink and turn over my glass to a friend of his in the sheriff’s office who would lift the prints. Bob suggested that I might continue to teach, so that my students would not be penalized by loss of credits, and agree to forgo my salary until the issue had been decided in court. The deans were immovable; these higher-ups conceded they were acting on instructions from President Bunzel, who in turn was almost certainly actuated by higher-higher-ups, the trustees and possibly the chancellor. As we left, they had already begun to discuss my replacement—I learned later that the leading candidate for my job was Clinton Duffy, retired warden of San Quentin prison.
Off to the Faculty Club where two or three hundred women were gathered for the reception. I took the sponsors aside and told them what had just happened—I had been fired, I intended however to meet my class as usual the next morning, but I had no idea what to expect; would the administration try to remove me forcibly? I asked if I might make a brief statement to the gathering explaining my position on the fingerprinting issue and asking their support. The sponsors were dubious; many of the women there, they said, were not “politically aware” enough to understand these matters, there were teachers from the athletic department, from nursing and homemaking.... So, in the receiving line, as guests came up with words of welcome I confided to each one, “I’ve just been fired.” This was greeted with uneasy titters; was it some sort of unfunny joke? Finally, I prevailed upon the sponsors to let me speak to the assemblage. The response was overwhelming. Women shouted their encouragement and support—some left to prepare leaflets calling for a campuswide mobilization at my lecture, others said they would alert the press to these developments, the women’s coach came up to say she would bring along the whole football team to be bodyguards and prevent my eviction!
P.m., relaxed with mate, who agreed to stay overnight and come to class with me tomorrow to explain the legal aspects of the matter to my students.
The unexpected intransigence of the administration, their rejection of every offer of compromise, made me pause to consider my legal position. Having swallowed the oath, I had gagged on the fingerprinting. What now?
My lawyers told me I had a very strong case. My contract said nothing about fingerprinting; the law which establishes the fingerprinting requirement for teachers in the California system from grade-school level through junior college had, possibly through oversight, not been extended to include the state universities. The administration had been unable to cite any statutory basis for the requirement; the best their lawyers could come up with was a 1962 memo from the chancellor’s office to all state college presidents instructing them to continue “the existing policy” of requiring all employees to be fingerprinted. The origins of that policy had, it seems, been lost in antiquity.
I c
ould refuse to be fingerprinted, let the university fire me, then sue for breach of contract. “You can just take a long vacation and get paid for not teaching,” I was assured. My lawyers were surprised, as I was, when I blurted out, “But I want to teach, I can’t bear the thought of giving it up.”
My insistence on continuing to teach (“your inexplicable attachment to your new calling” was the way one lawyer put it) made the lawyers’ task much more difficult, however, and the outcome more uncertain. It meant racing to court to find a judge willing, on the basis of affidavits alone, to sign a temporary restraining order commanding the university, pending a full-scale hearing to be held later, to reinstate me with full pay and to restore course credits for my students. They would try, they said, but were not at all confident that a judge would be willing to stick his neck out that far. If the judge refused to do anything without a full-scale hearing—and that would require at least two weeks’ notice—there would be a further period of uncertainty as to my status and that of my students.
For my own part, I was fully prepared to weather it. The four-month teaching job in San Jose was, after all, merely an unforeseen and enjoyable episode in a long and crowded life. Win or lose the court case, I should have plenty of other things to do. But what about my students, whose academic careers could be seriously disrupted while litigation meandered on? How would they react to this predicament? And my colleagues in the sociology department, many of whom I had never met? These nagging questions dominated my waking hours.
NOTES FROM JOURNAL, OCTOBER 11TH
Today was what Novelle calls, in her soft Southern drawl, “the Da-a-a-y of Infamy.” She came over early with her trusty tape recorder (she is preserving all this for History), and accompanied by a dozen students we walked over to the lecture hall. Rumors abounded—some said there was a sign on the door posted by the administration saying “Mitford Lecture Canceled,” others warned that security police were on hand to prevent the class from assembling and to drag me off the platform. To forestall a lockout, we decided to arrive fifteen minutes early and seat ourselves with the previous class held in that hall. As we approached the building, we saw hundreds of students assembled on the lawn, some with placards reading “We Want Jessica, Not Her Fingerprints,” a forest of television equipment, swarms of reporters. We made our way through and into the classroom, which was packed to the rafters— my usual attendance of two hundred students augmented to seven or eight hundred. A cheer went up as we came in, and a young man introduced himself as Student Body president—could he make a brief statement from the platform? Yes, indeed, said I. Dean Sawrey was on hand looking most uncomfortable—might he read a brief statement from the platform? Yes, Dean Sawrey, in this classroom we defend and uphold First Amendment rights of free speech for all; anybody can have his or her say without fear of censorship.
Poison Penmanship: The Gentle Art of Muckraking Page 21