She was in her first year as Dean. Three months after hiring her away from the little college in another state, President L---- had called to say that at the June Trustee meeting, he'd announced his intention to resign, effective in July of the following year.
She figured he'd only called her at all because of an incident during her interview in the Spring. It was during her "Wrap-up Meeting with the President" before being driven back to the airport heading home to her husband and two children.
"So," he said in a wrap-up kind of tone, "You've been here 48 hours or so, do you have any questions?" She wasn't sure but suspected he asked mainly because one does that in a final interview meeting.
But he seemed visibly startled when she said, "Yes" and waited a second or two. She had his attention: "What are your own plans?" she asked. "As a Vice President, when you leave I will be vulnerable or will feel vulnerable at least..."
He talked about being 62 and having always thought he wouldn't retire until he was at least 70. She thought that would be okay, not planning herself to stay more than five or six years.
So the next June when he called the Dean-elect again, two weeks before her movers came, President L---- acknowledged he'd told her before that he had no plans to retire. But he had been thinking lately that maybe he'd already accomplished his goals at V----- College and maybe he had other things to do elsewhere, perhaps in the ministry.
As she got to know her new colleagues in the first couple of weeks, from what they said she figured the Trustees had asked for President L----'s resignation.
Fortunately, there was only one faculty member up for tenure that first year, the kind of long-term decision usually made ultimately
. She was familiar enough with the whole process, having gone through it herself at two different institutions, but she knew it would take some time to get a feel for how it played out in practice from the Dean's perspective at this new place.
Of course, anyone denied tenure would get a contract for one final year...to look for another position.
So she was lucky only one such decision would fall into her own, unsupported hands so soon. As it turned out, President L---- was not only, as they say, "a lame duck." It turned out he was literally absent much of the time. No one knew if he was out of town or just laying low in the big colonial-style President's house on the hill above campus. But he didn't show up for work except, unpredictably, now and then.
Assistant Professor Ben Jamison had been elected to one of the faculty committees whose weekly meetings the Dean herself was expected to attend. This seemed to indicate a certain measure of confidence in Ben by his colleagues.
Like the Dean herself, Ben tended to show up for the committee meetings on time. That meant they had some time to chat, as the others arrived one by one. He was cheerful, down-to-earth, pleasant. He didn't seem to feel uncomfortable with her just because she was the new Dean. He didn't say much in the meetings themselves, but he did seem to be well-prepared and paying attention, agreeable.
She happened to notice one day, and again the following week, that Ben had a little twitch in a shoulder or neck muscle. One day when she arrived a minute later than usual, as members came in one by one, Ben was complaining to another committee member that his little twitch was annoying and a little distracting. The other faculty member was from the Nursing program and advised him to consult his doctor's nurse practitioner. She did not seem particularly concerned.
The first step in the tenure-review process occurred in mid-Fall, when the Dean and the Chair of the Faculty Tenure Committee met with the candidate - in this case, Ben Jamison - to make sure everyone was understanding things the same way and, especially, that the candidate understood what was expected of him: organizing peer visits to his classes, compiling a self-review report, and checking to see that his personnel file was up-to-date and complete by the submission deadline.
After the holidays, Ben dropped into her office, apparently just for a friendly chat. "How was your Christmas?" "Did you travel at all?" "Did you see family?" Things like that.
But he did seem a bit distracted. "You remember that I had that little twitch in my neck?" he said after a minute.
"I do remember," she said sympathetically. "Yes. Anything new?"
"I noticed over this last weekend," he said darkly, "that the same kind of twitch is now sometimes in my bicep....On the right."
She frowned.
"It's started to disturb my sleep," he added. "So, this morning I made an appointment with my doctor in B-----" (the town where he lived 35 miles away).
"Ben, that's the right thing. I hope he can tell you how to make it just go away."
"So, I'm asking your permission to leave campus right after class. I'll be missing the committee meeting this afternoon."
"Don't give it another thought," she said. "Your health comes first."
So, she said to herself: in
his mind it was really a business meeting after all. She thought most faculty would have just taken off, but Ben was evidently especially conscientious. Good for him.
6
With the tenure and promotion decisions expected by mid-April, in late February the chairman of Ben Jamison's division set up a meeting to speak privately with the Dean.
"I didn't want to surprise you," A---- said, a burly cordial man with a raspy voice. "About Ben Jamison."
"Oh, has something happened?"
"You know, as Chairman I have to submit a recommendation to the Tenure Committee." The Dean nodded. "I've talked it over with all our colleagues."
"Yes?"
"We're not going to support him," A----- said. "He's well-liked by his students, so there may be some flack. I know you like to avoid that sort of thing."
"What's happened? I don't understand, A----, since his mid-probation review was all positive." Dean D---- said. "Wasn't it?"
"Well, I guess so but this is now. My recommend will be to deny tenure. We have to maintain high professional standards."
"This is surprising indeed," she said. "The peer evaluations that have begun to come in have all been positive. ...Did you see them?"
"The Chairman has access to all the file. I've just been looking them over."
"What are we missing, A----? What do you folks know that the rest of us don't?"
"Yes," he said. "Well, first of all that mid-probation letter came from your predecessor, the last Dean." A---- smiled a little, "He was a cantankerous guy in many ways but on this one he told us he and President L---- didn't want to make a fuss. Worried about the student retention situation, you know," he added.
"You mean Ben's weaknesses were glossed over?"
"We said at the time we had some reservations about his commitment to the College. Did you see that?"
She hesitated. "It didn't jump out at me, I'll have to say. Did you say he may not have been making satisfactory progress?" A---- began to shake his head No. "...And tell him what he needed to do in order to earn your recommendation before this time around?"
"Not in the letter, no. Somebody probably told him, confidentially you know. I believe so."
"I'm getting a little uncomfortable about this, A----," Dean D------ said. "What exactly were those of you in the division concerned about? The same thing as now?"
"Oh, we've been very consistent. Ben's a heck of a nice guy... but he lives out of town, did you know that?" She nodded. "He's got a business over there in his hometown. He's told some of us - not me - that he makes more every year that way than in his work for the College altogether..."
"That does sound troubling," she said, "but..."
"It's just not right," the Chairman said. "We have to depend on everyone we have. If he's so damn popular, he ought to teach more."
"It's my impression that his student evaluations are pretty good, aren't they?"
"Yes, but you can't run a business and be a full-time faculty member too, can you? It's not right!"
"What would you say, if you were me talking to him, and he said it was not fair that there's nothing in his file about this. He wasn't formally told he'd have to change in order to get tenure."
"Oh," A---- said and sat back. "That's not the way it works. You don't have tenure until now, or after now I should say." He smiled. "Everybody knows that."
7
The last thing A---- said that day was that he'd already put the Committee's letter in the campus mail.
A month later, the Chair of the Tenure Committee came in to review for the Dean the Committee's upcoming recommendations. The two first-year reviews were fine, no problems there, she said. The three mid-probation reviews were okay too, but there was some concern about one person's ability to get students to participate in class discussions and another person didn't seem to be involved in any scholarly research or professional development.
"Will your recommendations to the President declare these concerns?" Dean D------ interrupted her to ask.
The committee chair paused a moment. "I guess it
is a recommendation," she said, "Technically. But it's really the College's communication to the probationer saying everything's OK, or not."
"But you won't neglect to formally declare any areas for improvement to be made, will you? It needs to be noted right in the file, doesn't it?"
The Chair shifted in her chair. "That's hard to do with your faculty colleagues, you know?"
"Yes," the Dean said. "But it's an important responsibility... The President's final letter can't very well just dump in some criticisms that haven't been mentioned before by anybody."
"We'll look at our letters again," the Chair said, "trying to find a tactful way of indicating our reservations. I can see what you're saying. But there isn't usually a President's letter, by the way. Just the Committee's."
"What have you heard about Ben's health?" the Dean asked, changing the subject.
"Well, we aren't talking about that in committee, but A---- said at lunch the other day that Ben was getting frustrated, not knowing. Anyway, though, you know we won't be giving him tenure. He's got his other business and all that."
"But your recommendation will say something tactful about that, right?"
8
"M---," the Dean thought Ben Jamison seemed agitated (she almost thought he looked scared). Most faculty used her first name, M---, but that was unusual for Ben.
"M---, I've been to two doctors now. A second opinion, you know? About this damn nervous twitch. They've had some tests and everything."
The Dean felt sorry for him. "Oh, Ben...," she said but waited for more.
"In the Easter break," he went on, "I'm going to Chicago to see a neurologist specialist. I won't have to miss any classes."
"What are they worried about?" she asked. "Something serious?"
"They say it's too early--," his voice got husky. He cleared his throat, "--Too early to know if it's anything to worry about, too early to tell. They don't know. So I'm having a special kind of blood test right away," he said sitting back a little. "They have to send it to some special lab. To see if there's anything genetic, I guess," he said. "Before the specialist sees me in Chicaqgo."
"Ben, you have a lot of friends here, you know. We'll have our fingers crossed."
"Okay," he said.
9
When she got her copy of the Committee's negative tenure letter, the day before the spring break started, she called Ben's office but he was already gone. He would have gotten a copy. She said on his Voice Mail that they should sit down together when he got back. "Good luck, Ben," she said. There was no answer at his home.
She got through to A----, Ben's Division Chair. "I'm concerned about Ben Jamison," she said. "He seemed worried about his health last time I saw him..."
"He said he was taking off an hour or so ago," A---- chuckled; "I think I'm the only one left in the building. And I'm fixing to leave too." After a second, he added; "Oh, the Committee's denying tenure, I heard."
"Do you think we could put that process on hold while he sorts out his health problem?"
"No. That's never been done."
She reached the Tenure Committee Chair at home. She also said the process had to follow the schedule in the Faculty Handbook, or they could be sued. "I don't think he'll be surprised, by the way. I don't know him, just to say Hi to, but others on the Committee say it won't be a big deal."
10
So the Dean wasn't surprised when Ben showed up in her office the morning after break. This time there was no chit-chat.
"When I asked you to come by--," she was starting to say when Ben broke in. She later concluded he had not yet heard her Voice Mail. He'd come straight from the parking lot to her.
"What?" he said.
"No, you go ahead," she said.
He said he'd been to the Chicago specialist. He had ALS, 'Lou Gehrig's disease.'
"It's fatal, M---," Ben said. And he looked scared, out of breath a little, a little flushed. Not sad or feeling sorry for himself, or even angry. Just scared.
"What can be done, Ben?" M--- asked. She was usually acutely conscious of how she would seem to her listener, how her attitude and manner would be interpreted... Later, she realized that talking with Ben that day, she'd not been thinking about that kind of thing, not at all.
He was already started on an extensive drug therapy program. He couldn't perceive any difference yet, except that he was sleeping better. That was good in itself. The course of the disease could not be predicted. It had moved pretty quickly from no symptoms to his current state with the neck twitch now and then and, less often, the funny little tickle in his bicep. But the disease had stopped progressing a couple of months ago.
"So we don't have to worry about my classes this term," he said.
"Are you sure, Ben?" she said. "You don't want to overdo..."
"No, all I'm saying is next year, next fall," he was speaking calmly in a matter-of-fact tone. "Next term I may have to cut back a course." He was starting to stand to leave. "I'll give you enough notice," he said.
"Do you have family there in B------, Ben?"
"My daughter helps run the family farm 30-35 miles away. She says she'll check in with me now and then." He turned back to face her: "But I don't know about the future, M---. I just don't."
11
Surprisingly, the President was in that day. She told him she wanted him "as the President" to tell Ben in a formal letter for the file that the tenure review process was officially suspended until his health situation was resolved. There was no benefit to denying tenure to a dying man.
The look on L----'s face showed how opposed he was to this bright idea from the new Dean. "What does the Division Chair say? Who is it this year: A----?"
She hadn't spoken with A---- or the Tenure Committee Chair, she said.
"Well, see if they think we could do this...if we wanted to. I think it can't be done. It would undermine the Committee."
She told him the division chair and the committee chair didn't seem likely to budge. It seemed hard to believe. But she would try.
L----'s manner said clearly he was through with this distasteful issue for today. She could reach him, he said, any time, through his secretary. "We'll talk again."
12
So, they did nothing.
Ben came in again a month into the summer. His daughter was waiting in the car. He would not be able to teach in the Fall after all, he said. He was sorry to let the College down. His doctors said sometimes there was a period of remission, but it was unpredictable. And the Fall semester was definitely out.
She went out to the car with him to meet the daughter. "Your Dad is to have a leave of absence for the Fall," she said. "With pay. Will you, Ben, keep me up-to-date?"
He said he would, of course. The daughter made eye contact as if to say she herself would keep M--- informed.
Later that day M--- told A---- the sad news, and by September they were able to cover Ben's courses with a minimum of trouble.
No one was saying anything about the tenure denial. M--- told her husband she couldn't tell if Ben's daughter even knew.
13
The next thing she knew, early in the fall, she learned Ben had died.
It popped into her head at that moment that Huckleberry Finn said, about some heinous event he'd witnessed, that it made him
ashamed of the whole human race. It seemed appropriate to the Dean that she'd thought of that remark just then.
