Excerpt from Chapter 21: Mud Season
As Isaac opened the door to the conference room, he expected to find the entire Committee on Faculty glowering at him from their usual spots at the table. Instead the college president was sitting at the long table with Barbara, just the two of them. They’d positioned themselves well apart from one another in a jarring symmetry on either side of the center window, like guests on a panel. “Am I early?” he asked.
“Not too early,” Rory answered, flashing a white-toothed smile. Nearly a decade younger than Isaac, the president looked like those silver-haired guys in the Viagra commercials. “Have a seat. We’re still sorting out a few things, but we’ll get started soon.”
Barbara didn’t bother to look up from her stack of papers.
Shrugging off his coat, Isaac gave his boots a nervous glance. Thanks to the higher elevation, winter clung on a bit longer here; snow still blanketed the campus, whereas back in town where he lived, mud season had already begun its tricks. He tried to step softly on the recently-cleaned floor, but a crumbly trail followed him to his seat.
Through the center window he watched the morning sunshine fan out along the length of dirt road beside the dining hall. It was not a fiery orange, but a soft, pretty light. A greeting card. Nothing like the bold lines and vibrant colors of Greece. Those spray-painted concrete buildings and growling motor scooters now seemed normal to him. Athens was alive, real. Populated.
“Where is everyone?” he asked.
“Well, the others aren’t coming,” Rory said, still grinning. “I wanted to discuss your options in private.”
Isaac took their awkwardness to be a good sign. “What’s all this?” He motioned vaguely at the stack of papers Barbara was shuffling for all eternity. “Isn’t the investigation over?”
Rory hesitated. “Well, yes—”
“Actually,” Barbara interrupted, briefly pinching the bridge of her nose as she spoke, “these are the transcripts of tape-recorded testimonies from the investigation.”
All Rory had to do was lift an eyebrow, and Barbara fell silent. “The truth is,” Rory went on, “I’m afraid there might have been a few procedural missteps in the handling of your case.”
This confirmed what Isaac had been suspecting since he entered the room: this meeting was about damage control. After all, he wasn’t the only one to screw things up. It appeared Barbara’s “procedural missteps”—like sitting on exonerating evidence to pursue a personal vendetta, for example—was catching up to her at last. This was Rory grabbing the reins to stop her from sending the college over a cliff.
Isaac had a solid case if he wanted to file a complaint with the Office of Civil Rights. An OCR investigation would certainly put Winston on the map, though not in a good way. Being added to the public list of all the schools in the nation with Title IX complaints against them could spark something big. If the press sniffed out a scandal, that could affect not only Winston’s federal funding, but also enrollment numbers, retention rates, income from donors, and so on. In short, things had snowballed into what Rory would call an existential threat, and this was in large part thanks to the Dean of Faculty, who had managed to make herself an even greater liability than the campus gadfly.
For Barbara, this had to be beyond humiliating.
For Isaac, it felt like vindication. But he could not declare victory, not just yet.
“It’s unfortunate you had to cut the Greece trip short,” Rory said, “I enjoyed watching the debate. Not sure how much of it was really about the Parthenon marbles, but I found it compelling. And I wasn’t the only one. I’m sure you’ve seen the comments on Dr. Petersen’s blog. Congratulations on that. It’ll be up on our website soon, and I think it’ll do the college some good. Maybe a dual classics-philosophy study abroad trip will become a regular thing at Winston, now that you’ve paved the way.”
Isaac nodded thoughtfully. “What’s going on with the investigation?”
Rory paused, taken aback by his directness.
Barbara, on the other hand, was more than happy to dispel with the pleasantries. “You should know that we’ve spoken with Uri. He told us about the video.”
There it was—Dr. Isaac Fischelson, guilty.
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Previously on “A Footnote to Plato”…
During his trial he claimed that death was nothing to be feared, at worst it was a “dreamless sleep.” That’s hardly comforting, if you ask me. I certainly don’t like the idea of sleeping forever while the world goes on without me, and I don’t think Socrates did either. Of course, there’s no escaping death, but I think he saw an opportunity to take control of his fate and make his death count. Like Achilles, like all warriors really, Socrates saw the advantage in facing death head on—better to become a martyr than to fade away.
In Chapter 19 and Part III, Virtual Reality…
Isaac backs out on his bargain with the universe when he finds out Sarah is safe, but he nevertheless calls off the trip. Even so, he looks forward to the debate, to the possibility of “immortality by internet”. Later that evening Dr. Petersen reveals the truth about what she overheard, Uri sends a message through Zeb about the investigation, along with a transcript of the sexual harassment investigation, but it appears Fischelson has made up his mind. He and Zeb argue over Socrates’ decision to stay in prison and Fischelson’s apparent defeatism in the Parthenon Marbles debate.
A Footnote to Plato: Chapters 20, 21, 22