Read Online First Citizen by Thomas T. Thomas - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Thomas T. Thomas
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seminar room filled with sixteen undergraduate bodies.
“Do you want to explain to me why,” Ballenger rumbled, “with your normal classroom discussion bordering on the moronic, you were able to prepare a nearly brilliant response to my left-fielded question?”
“Sir, it seemed obvious—”
“Of course it seemed obvious, Mr. Corbin. You were in my office last Tuesday, were you not? You will no doubt have noticed that the exam questions were stacked on the right side of my center desk drawer, the one with the small padlock on it, the padlock that has been missing since Tuesday. But perhaps you can be so astute as to tell me why you restacked those papers on the left side?”
“Sir, sir. I restacked? Are you accusing me of—”
“Your own essay accuses you. As does your classmate.” Ballenger shifted his focus. “Mr. Pollock?”
“Yes, Professor?” came that mocking voice, so at ease with this monstrous, this nightmare confrontation.
“Would you tell us all what you reported to me Wednesday morning, before the final?”
“I saw Jay Corbin at the door of your office, sir.”
This was a patent lie. I had indeed gone to Ballenger’s office, to discuss a theoretical point with him, and had arrived some minutes after his scheduled office hours. Then I went away. If Pollock had been around to see me, I would certainly have seen him.
“Yes, yes,” Ballenger fluttered. “But was he entering or leaving?”
“He appeared to be—” Pollock paused, as if to be certain-sure. “Leaving, sir.”
“Thank you, Mr. Pollock.” Ballenger turned his scowl to me. “Your next meeting with me, Mr. Corbin, will be in the dean’s office, the day after tomorrow. You will be asked to show cause why he should not have you expelled.”
I was terribly offended by Professor Ballenger’s insinuations. Not just this accusation that I had cheated on the exam, that was bad enough. But it was doubly insulting that he thought I was so inept a thief as to misplace the padlock and forget which side of the drawer the questions had come from.
At a guess, either Ballenger had lost the lock himself, shuffled the papers, and then grown wildly paranoid, or the real cheater had known the exam question beforehand and still bungled his essay as badly as everyone else. Irrelevant either way—the professor still wanted my scalp.
In the end, it never came to a formal expulsion, which would have gone on my record. They offered me the choice of resigning from the university or undergoing their formal procedure. Since the case against me consisted of several sets of words against mine, I chose the path of least resistance and fled with my transcript. I passed every subject with honors that semester, except political economy. There I got a simple “fail.”
The next semester, I enrolled again at Berkeley—but at the Alternative University, a nonprofit, semi-accredited institution in West Berkeley on Fifth Street. It was on the site of the old Urban Commune, a decrepit Victorian where the residents of fifteen years past had baked their human wastes for compost and slaughtered cagefuls of rabbits for protein.
The curriculum when I went there was a little more practical. Course names were just camouflage to keep the State inspectors happy. “Political economics” at this university meant how to write a Health and Human Services grant proposal, conduct direct-mail fund raising, and launder proceeds from volume deals in alternative pharmaceuticals. “Chemical engineering” introduced us to fifteen types of liquid and solid explosives that could be made from ingredients found in the local supermarket and hardware store. “English literature” was a straight how-to in propaganda. “Music appreciation” taught the finer points of automatic weapons. We studied beginning Arabic— wahid, ithnain, thelatha, arbe’a, and “Where is the water closet?”—in order to sensitize us to the political struggles of the Palestinians.
My great
“Do you want to explain to me why,” Ballenger rumbled, “with your normal classroom discussion bordering on the moronic, you were able to prepare a nearly brilliant response to my left-fielded question?”
“Sir, it seemed obvious—”
“Of course it seemed obvious, Mr. Corbin. You were in my office last Tuesday, were you not? You will no doubt have noticed that the exam questions were stacked on the right side of my center desk drawer, the one with the small padlock on it, the padlock that has been missing since Tuesday. But perhaps you can be so astute as to tell me why you restacked those papers on the left side?”
“Sir, sir. I restacked? Are you accusing me of—”
“Your own essay accuses you. As does your classmate.” Ballenger shifted his focus. “Mr. Pollock?”
“Yes, Professor?” came that mocking voice, so at ease with this monstrous, this nightmare confrontation.
“Would you tell us all what you reported to me Wednesday morning, before the final?”
“I saw Jay Corbin at the door of your office, sir.”
This was a patent lie. I had indeed gone to Ballenger’s office, to discuss a theoretical point with him, and had arrived some minutes after his scheduled office hours. Then I went away. If Pollock had been around to see me, I would certainly have seen him.
“Yes, yes,” Ballenger fluttered. “But was he entering or leaving?”
“He appeared to be—” Pollock paused, as if to be certain-sure. “Leaving, sir.”
“Thank you, Mr. Pollock.” Ballenger turned his scowl to me. “Your next meeting with me, Mr. Corbin, will be in the dean’s office, the day after tomorrow. You will be asked to show cause why he should not have you expelled.”
I was terribly offended by Professor Ballenger’s insinuations. Not just this accusation that I had cheated on the exam, that was bad enough. But it was doubly insulting that he thought I was so inept a thief as to misplace the padlock and forget which side of the drawer the questions had come from.
At a guess, either Ballenger had lost the lock himself, shuffled the papers, and then grown wildly paranoid, or the real cheater had known the exam question beforehand and still bungled his essay as badly as everyone else. Irrelevant either way—the professor still wanted my scalp.
In the end, it never came to a formal expulsion, which would have gone on my record. They offered me the choice of resigning from the university or undergoing their formal procedure. Since the case against me consisted of several sets of words against mine, I chose the path of least resistance and fled with my transcript. I passed every subject with honors that semester, except political economy. There I got a simple “fail.”
The next semester, I enrolled again at Berkeley—but at the Alternative University, a nonprofit, semi-accredited institution in West Berkeley on Fifth Street. It was on the site of the old Urban Commune, a decrepit Victorian where the residents of fifteen years past had baked their human wastes for compost and slaughtered cagefuls of rabbits for protein.
The curriculum when I went there was a little more practical. Course names were just camouflage to keep the State inspectors happy. “Political economics” at this university meant how to write a Health and Human Services grant proposal, conduct direct-mail fund raising, and launder proceeds from volume deals in alternative pharmaceuticals. “Chemical engineering” introduced us to fifteen types of liquid and solid explosives that could be made from ingredients found in the local supermarket and hardware store. “English literature” was a straight how-to in propaganda. “Music appreciation” taught the finer points of automatic weapons. We studied beginning Arabic— wahid, ithnain, thelatha, arbe’a, and “Where is the water closet?”—in order to sensitize us to the political struggles of the Palestinians.
My great
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