And there were others. Ren did not know all of them. Three women she had not met before stood together near the water fountain at the end of the corridor. One of them caught Ren’s eye and held it for a moment. There was a recognition in it that was not personal. It was the recognition of a shared experience. The way people sometimes look at each other across a room when they understand without needing to say it, that they have been in the same place.
Tusk came to stand beside her. “Word got around,” he said quietly. “Fuller mentioned to two faculty members that the hearing was proceeding. Marsh mentioned it to three others. People came.” Ren looked at the corridor at Deanna, who had stopped when she saw the people there and was looking at them with something on her face that Ren did not have a word for and did not try to name. “They are not all here to testify,” Tusk said. “Most of them are just here to be present, to make it visible that this is happening and that people know.” He paused. “Sometimes that is what the institution needs to understand, that it is being watched.” Ren looked at the committee room door. “Let’s go in,” she said.
The committee room held a long table at the front where five faculty and administrative members of the student conduct committee were seated. Behind a smaller table to one side sat a representative from the dean of students office. There was a respondent’s table where Derek Stole sat with two beside him, one of whom had the polished, prepared look of someone who had been formally briefed, and the other of whom was a man in his fifties wearing a suit that had not been bought for a university disciplinary hearing, but for a different kind of room entirely.
Ren noted him. She noted the suit and the posture and the way he sat slightly forward with his hands on the table in the manner of someone accustomed to this kind of proceeding. She noted that he was not a university official. She made a mental note to establish on the record who he was. She sat at the complainant’s table with Deanna beside her. Seth sat in the witness chairs along the side wall. Professor Marsh sat directly behind Ren with the binders on her lap. Coach Tusk sat beside Marsh. Fuller stood near the door, not seated, in her capacity as the administrator managing the proceeding.
The committee chair was a woman named Dr. Voss, a political science professor whom Ren had looked up the previous day, sixty years old, seventeen years at Harwick, a record of three published papers on institutional accountability in higher education. Ren had read all three of them on Wednesday night. Dr. Voss called the room to order. She reviewed the procedural rules, standard language. Ren listened and noted the things that would matter.
She looked at Derek when Voss was speaking. He was doing the thing he always did, reading the room, assessing the audience. He had looked at the people in the corridor when he walked in, and she had seen the brief calculation in his eyes, the acknowledgment that this was larger than he had expected, followed by the particular kind of confidence that belongs to people who have been through institutional processes before, and come out of them unchanged. He was not worried. He had been here before. The structure had protected him before. He had not yet understood that the structure was different today.
The man in the suit leaned close to Derek and said something. Derek nodded. Dr. Voss concluded the procedural overview. “Mr. Stole,” she said, “as the respondent, you will have the opportunity to present your account and call witnesses. I want to note for the record that the committee is aware that a request was made yesterday afternoon to postpone this hearing and that request was denied by the student affairs office. This proceeding is moving forward on its scheduled timeline.” She looked at both tables. “We’ll begin with the complainant statement.”
Ren stood. She spoke clearly and without notes. She described Tuesday in the cafeteria. The exchange, the escalation, the slap. She described it the way you describe something you have decided to tell the truth about without embellishment and without minimizing, which is the most precise language there is. She described the threatening text she had received Wednesday evening and stated that she had documented it with a timestamp and was prepared to submit it to the committee. She sat down.
Dr. Voss looked at Derek. “Mr. Stole, your response.” Derek stood. He was polished. That was the only word for it. He had been prepared well. He expressed concern for the complainant’s apparent distress. He used that word apparent twice in the first paragraph. He described the cafeteria incident as a misunderstanding that had escalated beyond what either party had intended. He characterized Ren’s statement to him. The four words she had said after the slap as a threat directed at him. He expressed surprise that a complaint had been filed when, to his understanding, the situation had been difficult for everyone involved and could have been resolved without formal proceedings. He sat down. The man in the suit nodded once.