A Function of Murder (16 page)

I tried to relax my jaw before taking on the Comments. I didn’t even want to see the
Likes. I recognized the names of one or two commenters, but for the most part they
were all foreign to me. From the spelling and grammar, it seemed they might indeed
have been from foreign lands. Every one of the comments had at least one typo. Not
that I was looking to discredit the messages.

As if she were the victim of a violent incident or a natural disaster. Or an unnatural
one, like a math professor.

There was one comment that made me LOL:

I decided to forgo reading the rest of the comments for now. I had the gist of the
sentiment and I wasn’t happy. It didn’t help my mood that my gaze kept landing on
the silver letter opener on my desk, one with the Henley College seal, exactly like
the one that was used to kill Mayor Graves. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d
used mine. I remembered thinking that we should have switched to flash drives as a
parting gift for graduates. Now I thought that maybe if we had, the mayor would be
alive.

I swept that ridiculous notion away, and finally also swept the letter opener into
the back of my bottom drawer. I doubted I’d ever use it again. I wished both the opener
and my sweater could walk on their own to the Henley dump.

I focused on the photograph of my mother and me at the Cape before she took ill. I
ran my finger along the top of the frame—my favorite way to dust—and moved the photograph
forward, where the letter opener had been, for better viewing.

I wasn’t finished with the distasteful grading issue, however. I switched to my email
and called up the correspondence Elysse and I had right after I’d made the graded
final exams available.

It seemed that Elysse and her Facebook friends spoke only in multiple punctuation
marks. I’d considered responding in all caps, but had thought better of it.

(No multiple periods; I was impressed.)

I’d found the form signed by both Elysse and the proctor, scanned it, and attached
it to what I hoped was our last email communication.

A few hours later, Elysse had come back with:

Way to win friends, Elysse, and influence your teachers.

I’d made a few more attempts to explain that the whole point of the exam question,
which everyone else in the class had understood, was not to show that you could use
a calculator, but to show that you’d grasped the concepts and could demonstrate them
graphically.

I pointed out that even with this less-than-stellar final exam performance, she had
a solid B for the term, which was a good grade. She pointed out that a B was not solid
and would be one of the lowest grades on her transcript. She might want to go to grad
school someday, and would need the highest GPA she could get. “And what I deserve!!”
she’d added.

With all that had gone on since those emails, I’d forgotten that I never did receive
closure from Elysse, not a word that indicated she’d accepted my decision.

Apparently because she hadn’t. One of her Facebook posts read:

It had been years since I’d had to resort to reading the college handbook for steps
in carrying out a school policy. I was aware of the good news part—that students could
formally appeal only final grades, not individual exam scores. Since grades weren’t
due from the faculty for another two weeks, I had some time to gather my documentation,
and my wits. I didn’t look forward to the headache that was sure to accompany the
project.

As I recalled from an early reading of the handbook, the formal process for appealing
a grade was long, involving department heads and deans in a chain of decisions. The
handbook needed updating, I realized, with social media now preempting much of the
secrecy and substituting for notifications that used to be sent by ground mail on
college letterhead.

I wasn’t even sure where my copy of the handbook was these days. Probably in my office
on campus.

Time to call Fran.

“Flunk her,” I said. Fran laughed, fortunately hearing the laughter in my own voice.
“Do you have your handbook at home?”

“I just happen to have it right here, open to page twenty-three,” she said.

Sometimes just one good real-life friend is better than three thousand cyberfriends.

“Lay it on me,” I said, one of Bruce’s favorite expressions.

“Most of the ‘Grievance Policy’ section is for things like harassment and discriminatory
practices, in case the
school is not attending to the needs of students with disabilities, or students who
feel their civil rights are being violated.”

“Do students have a right to an A?” I interrupted. Then, “Sorry, I’m letting Elysse
get to me.”

“This is not like you,” Fran said.

I left the rest of my sandwich on my office desk, grabbed my water bottle, and took
it and the phone to my den. Maybe I could be more like me in a different environment.
Ariana, jack-of-all-crafts, had framed and hung a new print I’d bought at a show.
I looked now at the soothing watercolor, a collage of images of Boston, with a focus
on the Freedom Trail that included Faneuil Hall, King’s Chapel, the Old State House,
and the Granary Burying Ground, where Mary “Mother” Goose was buried. Just about every
schoolchild in Massachusetts had taken a field trip to the sites pictured.

In the lower corner of the print was an image of the first public school in the country,
established by the Puritans and attended by Benjamin Franklin, Samuel Adams, and John
Hancock, in addition to lesser lights. You couldn’t get much closer to the beginnings
of education in America.

I realized that what bothered me most about the situation with Elysse was my own reaction
to her grievance. I prided myself on not having an us-versus-them attitude with respect
to my students. I usually blamed myself instead of my students when a lesson didn’t
quite work. Some of my colleagues had faulted me for the mind-set, claiming that I
was too friendly, with my majors especially, and that I took the students’ side on
most issues that came up. With needy students like Kira, I took on the role of therapist,
parent, confessor.

Fortunately, most of my students were somewhere in the middle of the spectrum, between
an overconfident Elysse Hutchins and a self-effacing Kira Gilmore.

I had to ask myself now—if Elysse hadn’t gone all multiple exclamation points on me,
and created a protest
against me on Facebook, would I be more willing to give her the points and chalk it
up to poor instructions on my part? It was hard to tell.

“Better you vent to me than in public, really or virtually,” Fran said, still waiting
for my response.

I heard pages flipping and children’s voices in the background. Fran’s grandchildren.
“I’m keeping you from your family day,” I said.

“Yes, thanks. I’m losing badly at electronic hangman.” More flipping pages, then,
“There’s a big section on plagiarism and cheating. Is that what we have here?”

“Neither, as far as I know.” I explained the details of the problem, what I’d asked
for, what Elysse had submitted.

“Got it. Did anyone else misinterpret your instructions?”

“No, the other twenty-two students got it right, or at least approached it correctly.”

“A big class.”

“Lots of nonmajors.”

“What’s Elysse doing next year, anyway?” Fran asked. “I’ve lost track.”

“She’s putting off grad school. She has a biotech job in Boston.”

“Not too shabby. Okay, here it is. ‘Procedure for Grade Disputes and the Grade Appeal
Process.’”

“That sounds ominous. What’s the first thing I’ll have to do if she goes through with
this?”

“You know you have two weeks before she can do anything.”

“It will fly by.”

Fran hummed while she read partly to herself, partly out loud. Between indecipherable
clucks and hums, I heard mumbled phrases involving faculty responsibility to make
expectations clear, students’ responsibility to know what’s expected, plus a few yada
yadas, until she was ready to read pertinent instructions.

“The student should consult the faculty member first.”

“She did,” I said. I summarized the email correspondence between Elysse and me.

“Maybe you should try talking in person,” Fran suggested. “You know, face-to-face,
instead of face-to-book.” Fran chuckled at her Facebook send-up.

“Of course. I should have done that right away.” I drew a deep breath. I really had
lost perspective. “I’ll try to set up a meeting with her. But I’d better hear the
rest of the procedure anyway.”

Fran read, “If the dispute cannot be resolved, the student must submit a written request
for review to the chair of the department within which the course was offered, or
to the academic dean, if the instructor against whom the grievance is being filed—”

“Is also the chair,” I filled in. Lucky me.

“Right. The rest of this is what you expect. The request is formalized into a Case,
capital
C
, the dean notifies the instructor, the instructor responds in writing, both instructor
and student need to submit documentation, there’s a review committee, a mediation
committee, yada yada. There are huge paragraphs under all these headings.”

“What’s the bottom line?” I asked.

“I’m scanning.” I heard more humming, more children’s voices. I took the opportunity
to imbibe a long gulp of water. “Looks like the dean then makes a recommendation,
but it’s the instructor’s decision in the end. Hmmm. I’m surprised.”

“Me, too. Remember Susan Murray’s trial a few years ago?” I asked, referring to a
colleague at a nearby college.

“
Trial
is a good word for it. After all the machinations, her dean had the last word and
ordered Susan to make a grade change.”

I blew out a breath. “Let’s hope it doesn’t get that far anyway.”

“Amen,” Fran said, and I let her return to playing hangman with her own middle school
set.

Back in my office, I gave some thought to emailing Elysse and asking for a face-to-face
as Fran had suggested. I opened a Compose screen and tried several versions of
We have to talk
. I deleted all of them.

What stopped me was a new phenomenon—fear of being sued. What if my asking for a meeting
was tantamount to admitting I’d been wrong in taking off points? It wasn’t so much
admitting defeat that bothered me, it was all the ramifications. Would Elysse be able
to sue the school, or me? Could she claim emotional distress and get a big settlement
that would cost Henley a large amount of money and cost me my job? Had things really
gotten that bad between me and one of my students? The idea made me sad.

I couldn’t take a chance. I probably should already have consulted with the college
legal department. I hated the thought, but I decided that silence was my best tactic
at the moment, until I could talk to the dean. Or a lawyer.