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other-handing and still-neverthelessing me, Fred!”
The President couldn’t believe it. The little shitbird insisted on putting him right against the wall.
“You know, I know, and Mr. Roth here knows that Jojo”—uttered contemptuously—“Johanssen, whose SAT scores, if we had access to them, which we don’t”—he gave the President a sharp look—“and why not, Fred?—would no doubt prove to be lower than his hat size, assuming he knows what a hat is, other than an adjustable baseball cap, which he wears sideways—”
“That’s not true, Professor! You’re dead wrong about his SATs.”
Buster Roth couldn’t hold back any longer, and the President knew he had to jump in fast lest the whole meeting turn into a pissing match. Merely being called “Professor”—just that, Professor rather than Professor Quat or Mr. Quat—was enough to set Jerry Quat off, since Jerry would know that in the mouths of coaches and recruited athletes the title Professor, all by itself, carried the co
“Oh yeah?” Quat snapped. “Then why won’t anybody—”
“Mr. Quat! Mr. Roth!” said the President, “Please! Let’s remember one thing! Whatever any of us may think, Mr. Johanssen retains some basic rights here!”
He knew the word “rights” would get to Jerry Quat. To Jerry, rights would be the civic equivalent of angels. Sure enough, Quat shut up, and Buster Roth was shrewd enough to shut up, too, and let the President argue the case for Jojo’s “rights.” The President continued: “Now, I gather we all agree that Mr. Johanssen’s paper was suspiciously far above the rhetorical level of any other work he had submitted.”
“Rhetorical level?” said Jerry Quat. “He doesn’t even have a clue what the words mean!”
“All right, it looks suspicious in terms of vocabulary, too. But that is prima facie evidence, which presents us with a problem. No one has less tolerance for plagiarism than I do. No one is more of an absolutist when it comes to the penalties for plagiarism than I am. But the language of the judicial code is very clear on this point. Plagiarism must be proved by discovering the source of the material in question. Stan Weisman has done the best job he could, it seems to me.” He was careful to use the man’s name, which was Jewish, rather than his title, judicial officer. “He did a coordinate search of all the usual suspects, all the rogue Web sites that offer to provide students with papers. He did a coordinate search of every other paper submitted for that assignment, including those from three of Mr. Johanssen’s teammates. And he came up with nothing. He interrogated Mr. Johanssen, who denies receiving any help other than the books cited in his bibliography. He interrogated Mr. Johanssen’s tutor, a senior named Adam Gellin, who denied writing the paper or even assisting on it.”
“Adam Gellin?” said Jerry Quat. “Why do I know that name?”
“I believe he works for The Daily Wave,” said the President, who by now knew very well that he did.
“Well, I’ve seen the name somewhere.”
“Professor—”
Oh shit. Buster Roth was piping up again with his Professor.
“We’re very firm about that with the tutors. That’s the first thing we tell them. They’re there to help the student-athlete”—Quat’s lips and nostrils twisted sarcastically at the very term—“but they’re not there to do their work for them. Writing a paper for somebody—no way.” He shook his head and slashed the air with the edge of his hand, to emphasize the “no way.” “This is Adam Gellin’s third year working with student-athletes, as fine a young man as I ever met, and I never heard a him doing nothing that wasn’t strictly by the book. I talked to him myself after this thing came up, and he got mad at me for even suggesting—you know what I’m saying? I never saw him lose his temper before, but this?…No way!” He slashed the air again. “I know Adam—and Adam? They don’t come any more decent and honest than Adam Gellin…No way!” Another slash for good measure.
The President let out his breath. Bravo, Buster. He could have used a little help in the grammar and syntax department, but he had managed to be pretty convincing. This was all very tricky stuff for the President. Circumstances had forced him to become a temporary ally of Buster Roth. Roth had approached him and warned him—although not in so many words—that if Johanssen was forced out for even one semester, the scandal would hurt not merely “the program” but the entire university. It wasn’t that Buster was so concerned about losing Johanssen himself—he was gradually being replaced by a hot freshman named Congers, anyway—but such a turn of events would make “the program” look so sleazy and hypocritical. For years the university had built up and promoted its reputation of being a national power in football, basketball, ice hockey, and even minor sports—track and field, baseball, lacrosse, te
But there was no instructing the faculty to keep mum about such things and cooperate. You had to become a college president to realize how powerful the faculty could be when aroused. We are the university, was the attitude of the Dupont faculty. Consequently, they resented not only the vast amount of money that went to sports, they also resented the glory. Why should a collection of anabolic morons such as the Dupont basketball team, led by a man who goes by the ridiculous name of Buster, be idealized at one of the world’s greatest institutions of learning? The President had wondered about the same thing himself, for years; and when he was a young faculty member, he had been resentful and contemptuous the same way Jerry Quat was, although not with such bitterness. It wasn’t until he was promoted from chairman of the history department to provost of the university that he began to understand. Contrary to what most people believed—himself included in days gone by—big-time sports did not make money for the university, did not help to underwrite the academic departments, etc. National championship teams receiving big postseason television fees lost still more money, more than all the minor sports, baseball, te