Genre

Friday, December 21, 2012

Not Harassment, But Still... [story]

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[found on a park bench]

Not Harassment But Still...

1

Here's the story, as I've been able to piece it together.  Maybe Ronald technically shouldn't have told me about the conversations between just himself and Ted, but he did. The private conversations he had with the redoubtable Master Stuart Bluestone, well that's really different, since now - so help me - I have him to supervise. I even asked for him!

And come to think of it, Ted himself was right there in our Department, and I'm now department chair. So Ted's confidential story - and all the scandal surrounding our department because of his escapades - might be considered something I should know about.

Anyway I do know, so I'm going to write it down.  Wouldn't you?

2

The final stage began when an outraged member of the biological department of our museum institute told me about the pass Ted had made at her.

I was one of the 20 or 25 who'd participated in Ronald's workshop that day when Loo ("Louisa," I guess) collared him as people were hurrying to get home or wherever they wanted to spend the rest of Saturday afternoon. She was often in some sort of rage or other, but it looked to me as though this one was different, worse or at least more personal. Ronald's reaction was different too: he was intensely focused on what Loo was saying and his look was dark.

Just on general principles, I had to ask her Monday or Tuesday when just the two of us were there in the outer Post Office collecting our mail from the little boxes. "Say, Loo," I said, "I was sorry to see you had some kind of disaster to report to Ronald the other day."

"Damn right," she said, instantly ready to go another round. "I'm not going to repeat what that low-life business guy said to me. It was right here, on this spot, when it was just the two of us getting our mail."

"Did he touch you?"

"I would have killed him," Loo said through her teeth. "But it's bad enough that he hit on me," she went on, "and Phyllis said he'd done the same thing with her. Even Betty. But staff women can look out for themselves --"

"Still, it's sexual harassment," I threw in. "You could sue him."

"Damn right, we could," she liked thinking about what she could do to him. (It turned out it was Ted Maugham she was talking about, whom she had called "that low-life business guy.") "But," Loo went right on, "We can take care of ourselves, you know? But he's talking with students too. Trying to hit on students! Can you imagine?"

It turned out Ronald told her to write up a report for him on her incident, and to also get Phyllis to write up her experience. So now she was going to see if she could also find some women students who would complain to the Director too. Or maybe to the Director's Assistant, the woman in that office.

3

In all the Anthropology program, our classes are small.  We work shoulder to shoulder with our students, so without raising any red flags or anything I thought I could poke around a little. To one or two of the guys during that next week, I said something like: "Say, I read something about harassment in schools. We don't have any men staff trying to hit on female students here, do we?"

They responded differently. One said,"Well, not really." Another said, "I haven't seen any at least..." Another one said, laughing, "Where do you live, old man? Sure, there are a couple of them!"

So, it seemed even the guys had heard a story or two but didn't think it was a scandal or anything. I asked a female, a senior who was doing an independent project with me. I said, "Are there any individuals you and the others warn the new students about?"

"Only that guy in business," she said. "He jokes around about it."

4

Ted was a young 35 or so. He was blond and athletic-looking, handsome, in good shape, with a sparkling smile. He seemed ready to be amused at any moment.

His consulting papers were all confidential, so no one else ever saw them. A few skeptics wondered aloud how much was just his personal market research, for playing the stock market.  Students liked hanging around with him, working on their own projects.

He always seemed short on money too. Our salaries at the Institute are not lower than in most other areas at the Museum, but Ted was the only one of us who seemed to need more all the time.  He spent every summer moonlighting at the community college in the little lake village north of here where he and "his woman," as he called her, had lived for a long time. He's probably still there if he's still alive. I'd say there's not much hope the woman is...

5

So Ronald - as he mentioned later - had gotten the pitiless written report from Loo and an oral one from Phyllis. Ted had probably thought he was kidding, not realising that these two professional women did not think joking around about casual sex was to be expected (or tolerated).

No students came forward, but Loo said they told her Ted made jokes right in class about how many women he had laid the night before.

"Say, Ted," Ronald said to him a bit later, waiting for a committee meeting to begin, "would you set up a time to come see me later this week?"

He'd told Ted someone had overheard him apparently joking around about casual sex with a colleague. This was an introduction to reminding Ted of the strict policy against colleague relationships, and of course sex contact with a student would lead to dismissal on the spot. No, No, Ted had said. That was just silly talk. But he could see now why he shouldn't have done it.

Ronald sent him a brief note confirming they had reviewed the sexual harassment policy together, with a copy to the file.

6

I was on that community outreach committee too, and Ted had actually been chairman the year before. He took that work seriously, prepared carefully, didn't seem a boob or a simple ne'r-do-well.

Ted was cooperative too. As part of their General Program, all students had to take at least one course in museum management. Not preservation or museum history or something, but where they would really have to face up to the day-to-day business practicalities of our profession. 

Marketing and Fundraising were the most popular choices, both of them Ted's courses. Almost every term he was willing to set the class limit at 25 instead of 15 or 20, like the rest of us. Since it saved getting someone part-time to do an evening section, Ronald was willing to hire an assistant for Ted. The deal was that he would never just let this young woman take the class or even half the class by herself - she was a recent graduate of our own but hadn't yet worked on a master's - and Ted never complained about his teaching load. ...Like the rest of us do, if I'm honest with you.

7

Seemed like the next thing we knew Ted was just gone. Over one weekend he had just cleaned out all his stuff, even his filing cabinets; the College had hired movers. The IT department was just down the hall from Business, and some of their guys said they'd helped box up and carry Ted's stuff Saturday afternoon.

We were curious, of course, and as department chair I had to work with Ronald and with the remaining business faculty to find part-timers to cover Ted's duties for the rest of that year and all the next year, while we looked for a permanent replacement.

But even the usual soreheads didn't say a word about he wasn't fairly treated or it was wrong for the Director and the Board to be able to just fire somebody, without staff hearings or something like that. Ted didn't file a grievance.

8

Eventually, over time I learned that Ronald had decided to interview all the advaned business students to find out if they had any sense of any sexual escapades of Mr. Maugham. All very confidential, of course. The conversations were billed as part of a program review. "You know, we're always trying to improve..." That kind of thing.

At the time there were fewer than a dozen or so advanced students. One or two recent graduates were contacted too.

Hush-hush is right. I mean, I make it my business to know what's going on around here, and I didn't hear anything about this.  Ronald's assistant Stephanie was the main interviewer.

But Ronald reserved the extraordinary Mr. Bluestone for himself.

Come to think of it, I might never have heard anything about all this if I hadn't asked Ronald at the end of that year if I could hire Stuart to replace the Technical Assistant in Online Education. He told me Stuart might be a little crazy.

He is a character, true enough. But he's starting his third year with me now, and I don't know what we'd do without him.

9

"Thanks for coming over, Stu," Ronald would have started. "You're still working on your Marketing certification, aren't you? Even though you're part-time now, working for IT full-time?"

"I've got six hours to go," he would have said. "Yes. It's nice to talk to the Director himself."

Anyway, Stuart spent an hour maybe, when the other interviews had lasted 20 minutes or so. That's the way he is. Talks non-stop. Mostly about himself, in fact...

Ronald learned that Stuart (he hated being called "Stu") had quit the full-time Business program because of bad blood that had grown up between him and Ted Maugham. So Ronald would have to be on guard against some bias in this interview.

Stuart must have said he'd have known if Ted had been sleeping with the females in the program. That Stuart's a real busy-body, you know? Always up on the juiciest gossip.  That riles some people up, don't you know.

But Stuart said Ted did seem to think about sex a lot, and he would jokingly pretend that the women were eager to get in his pants... But he didn't expect anybody to take him seriously. Now, that new assistant had come on since Stuart had gone to work for IT; he didn't know her very well. So he didn't know about her and Ted. But not students in general, no.

That's apparently the consensus Stephanie and Randall were finding. (Stephanie actually talked with the assistant directly and was convinced she was offended by the very idea.)

Ronald said, though, Stuart really hated Ted. He told the Director that afternoon that all the IT guys were always complaining about him among themselves. He would drop into their office and hang out with them. They were his "friends," he seemed to think, and he was always getting them to update or reprogram his computers, or help him unload his truck.

He said they really didn't think it was right that he kept beer in his little fridge in the lab. He'd get them to carry a case or two up to his second-floor lab most weekends, apparently. Or at least, that's what ol' Stuart said that day with Ronald.

10

The reason Ronald told me about this conversation was that he had poked around just a little to see if he could find out why Stuart had split with Ted in the first place. In the course of Stuart's ramblings, he said in several different ways that his own software programs were "great works of art." Not pretty good, or good. Literally great.

"I'm like Gates, you know?" he'd said, leaning forward. "Only I'm better than him, or Steve Jobs either, do you see?"  Ronald quoted him word-for-word on that one.

You can see why he thought I might want to reconsider hiring Stuart away from Information Technology. Just imagine. He was quite serious about his own talent, Ronald thought, and he assumed Ronald believed so too.

11

Stephanie and Byron both confronted Ted late one afternoon. They told him what they'd been hearing about him, and asked him flat out if he'd ever had sex with a student in our program. He understood why they had to ask and he simply said No, he had not.

They told him he had to stop joking around about sex, whether with students or anybody else. He accepted that, and then Randall said he thought Ted had a problem with alcohol.  Ted denied that.  Ronald said Ted needed help, counseling.  If Ted asked him, he could give him some names and phone numbers.  The county had a good clinic, and it was free.  Ted didn't argue.  He sat quietly.

Stephanie added that the alcohol wasn't an Institute problem per se, only if it interfered with his duties...

After kicking all this around for most of an hour, they shook hands and wound it up amicably. Apparently they had also reminded Ted that the deal about the assistant was that she would never be left in charge of a class. (It was a bragging point for parents that we don't have teaching assistants at our college, unlike the universities.)

Randall didn't know the truth for sure, but he was convinced he didn't have enough against Ted to take any disciplinary action. Only another letter, with a copy to Ted's file.

12

The very next week, though, the Art assistant came to see Stephanie again. She told her she'd been thinking about all the emphasis Stephanie had placed on her never being left alone with a class. Did he know Ted took all day Friday off?

It didn't affect her because her courses with Ted were all on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but it was well-known you couldn't talk with Professor Maugham on Fridays. She herself couldn't reach him, even on his cell. He didn't want emails or texts either. You had to wait until Monday.

One of the students, a sophomore, took Ted's place in the Friday class. He'd been doing this for years, even back when the assistant herself was still a student. These students who covered for him on Friday weren't even advanced undergraduates, just regular students registered for that course.

13

Stephanie found out who that student was this semester. She was thrilled that Professor Maugham trusted her - and the other students - well enough to leave them on their own doing course lab. It was her favorite class. She was planning to change her major from Archival.

No, there was nothing special about the way Mr. Maugham interacted with the students, the assistant reported. Friday was a self-directed "computer lab" day.

It seemed clear the students in this class thought it was just normal for a teacher to just regularly skip class one day a week.

14

Ronald made a point of reminding all the staff at the opening meeting of the next term that everyone was expected to meet or make up every scheduled class meeting. The Registrar should be informed in case, for example, of missing class even due to illness; that was in case anybody should need to communicate with the teacher or any of the students during the scheduled hour.

I wasn't the only one, I think, who understood this was Ronald's way of explaining why Ted had suddenly disappeared.

Maybe I should mention all this stuff to one or two others...?  It's pretty good stuff, don't you think?

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