to me in her own right. To my surprise, she took my advice about speaking up in class. She actually began raising her hand on a regular basis. She was blunt, sometimes funny, sometimes the star of the discussion. An issues-kind-of-student, Denise could complain about Dido’s lack of professionalism with a straight face. She had a country to run. Sure, she had feelings, but she had responsibilities too! Didn’t she think about that? ‘I mean the world isn’t all guys! There’s other things important too!’
Othello got no sympathy. What a dumbass! Hamlet needed to get laid. And what was with Ophelia? What was the real message here? Girls are nothing without guys?
If a teacher is lucky, there’s always one student who can jumpstart a flagging discussion or, in my case, a flagging semester. That was Denise Conway for me, and in various ways I let her know I was proud of her.
Whether in response to my encouragement or because of her own unexpected excitement for all things literary Denise liked to drop by my office two or three times a week. She had an idea for one of the required papers and we talked through that. Another time, she wanted to talk about changing jobs. Did I have any ideas? Jobs? As in no more dancing? She was, she said, starting to feel like a piece of meat. I talked about student worker programs. One day, she came in looking exhausted. There had been trouble at the club the night before. The police had come. One of the patrons had gone to the hospital, one to jail. Walt was there. Walt had crawled under his table. I told her Walt wasn’t the man for a crisis. No argument there, but the student worker thing was looking better and better. I made a call across campus and got her set up to meet someone.
The next day Denise dropped in to tell me Buddy didn’t want her to quit her job at The Slipper. Could I believe that?
I made a point of asking her some hard questions about the relationship and what she thought the future might hold.
‘You know,’ I said finally, ‘when you’re into something like you are, a business like that, it feels like you don’t have options. People make you believe you can’t do something else. But you can do what you decide you want to do, Denise. It might cost. It might even bruise you, but you alone have the power to change your own life, if that’s what you want.’
Denise missed the next class. The day following that, I got a call from Leslie Blackwell in Affirmative Action.
Could I come across campus and talk to her?
We made an appointment for the following morning.
Chapter 6
AS A RULE I DIDN’T talk much with Molly about what went on at school. It was my way of separating my realities, and she was okay with that. She knew Buddy Elder was taking my class, but not that he and I had squared off in my office. I told her Buddy’s stripper girlfriend was taking my Intro to Literature class but that was the extent of it. I certainly didn’t tell her I had been summoned to appear at the office of Affirmative Action. It was simply not Molly’s world.
She had no interest in it.
Affirmative Action operated under the control of the university president as an investigatory agency.
Through its work, the president’s office monitored every aspect of the university’s compliance to federal law regarding civil rights, including sexual discrimination.
Are departments hiring a racially and culturally diverse faculty? Are women treated without bias, provided with the same opportunities, paid according to the same scale as men? Affirmative Action’s mandate was to investigate, and naturally the office intruded into business that various professors and departments considered their own.
At that stage, however, most of us were used to investigations. Though it was a bit intimidating getting The Call, most of us had learned to pass it off as part of the modern landscape. Having been interviewed a couple of times in cases relating to Walt, I was actually used to it, and I
Othello got no sympathy. What a dumbass! Hamlet needed to get laid. And what was with Ophelia? What was the real message here? Girls are nothing without guys?
If a teacher is lucky, there’s always one student who can jumpstart a flagging discussion or, in my case, a flagging semester. That was Denise Conway for me, and in various ways I let her know I was proud of her.
Whether in response to my encouragement or because of her own unexpected excitement for all things literary Denise liked to drop by my office two or three times a week. She had an idea for one of the required papers and we talked through that. Another time, she wanted to talk about changing jobs. Did I have any ideas? Jobs? As in no more dancing? She was, she said, starting to feel like a piece of meat. I talked about student worker programs. One day, she came in looking exhausted. There had been trouble at the club the night before. The police had come. One of the patrons had gone to the hospital, one to jail. Walt was there. Walt had crawled under his table. I told her Walt wasn’t the man for a crisis. No argument there, but the student worker thing was looking better and better. I made a call across campus and got her set up to meet someone.
The next day Denise dropped in to tell me Buddy didn’t want her to quit her job at The Slipper. Could I believe that?
I made a point of asking her some hard questions about the relationship and what she thought the future might hold.
‘You know,’ I said finally, ‘when you’re into something like you are, a business like that, it feels like you don’t have options. People make you believe you can’t do something else. But you can do what you decide you want to do, Denise. It might cost. It might even bruise you, but you alone have the power to change your own life, if that’s what you want.’
Denise missed the next class. The day following that, I got a call from Leslie Blackwell in Affirmative Action.
Could I come across campus and talk to her?
We made an appointment for the following morning.
Chapter 6
AS A RULE I DIDN’T talk much with Molly about what went on at school. It was my way of separating my realities, and she was okay with that. She knew Buddy Elder was taking my class, but not that he and I had squared off in my office. I told her Buddy’s stripper girlfriend was taking my Intro to Literature class but that was the extent of it. I certainly didn’t tell her I had been summoned to appear at the office of Affirmative Action. It was simply not Molly’s world.
She had no interest in it.
Affirmative Action operated under the control of the university president as an investigatory agency.
Through its work, the president’s office monitored every aspect of the university’s compliance to federal law regarding civil rights, including sexual discrimination.
Are departments hiring a racially and culturally diverse faculty? Are women treated without bias, provided with the same opportunities, paid according to the same scale as men? Affirmative Action’s mandate was to investigate, and naturally the office intruded into business that various professors and departments considered their own.
At that stage, however, most of us were used to investigations. Though it was a bit intimidating getting The Call, most of us had learned to pass it off as part of the modern landscape. Having been interviewed a couple of times in cases relating to Walt, I was actually used to it, and I
Similar Books
