Catch a Falling Knife

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    Somehow, Mark got through the lecture in one piece and even impressed me. He gave a coherent presentation that I understood. He told a couple of jokes and elicited some chuckles from the audience. When he finished he received another round of applause, again from about half the students. He didn’t acknowledge it, pretending to be busy putting his notes into his attaché case. By the time I stood up and looked around, his accuser had disappeared.
    The students filed rapidly out of the lecture hall. Mark remained occupied until they were gone and then looked up. In answer to my unspoken question he said, “Nobody is supposed to know about this. They told me it was completely confidential.”
    “Somebody didn’t get the word,” I said. I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised. Bad news has a way of leaking out, especially if someone has a reason for wanting it to be public.
    As we walked up the sloping aisle toward the exit I heard loud, human-sounding noises coming from outside the hall. Now what? We reached the back and could see outside. A bunch of students, mostly women but also a few men, paraded in front of the entrance, carrying placards and shouting. I couldn’t make out what they were shouting because they drowned each other out, but the placards had words written on them.
    Samples were: “RAPISTS ROT IN HELL,” “HARASS THE HARASSER,” and one particularly nasty one carried by a coed who looked like a sumo wrestler: “DO UNTO OTHERS: FUCK MARK PAPPAS.”
    The signs reminded me of the Free Speech Movement in Berkeley in the sixties, but the words on these signs were intensely personal. Did they have constitutional protection here at Crescent Heights College? Was it only Mark who didn’t?
    Mark clearly wanted to get away from this. I said, “Go on. I’ll see you later.” He gave me a questioning look, but I said, “I’ll be all right.” I didn’t think the students would attack me, but I didn’t have the same confidence in regard to Mark.
    He left the scene at a fast walk. Some of the students followed him, but they had to practically run to keep up. The number thinned and when there were only a few left he stopped and confronted them. He talked to them for a few seconds. Apparently, whatever he said made an impression because when he went on and disappeared around a building they came back to the group.
    The others had stopped chanting now that the object of their wrath was gone. I went up to the sumo wrestler and said, “What’s going on?” She looked at me suspiciously. I didn’t know whether she associated me with Mark because we had come out of the hall together. I said, “I’m Professor Morgan.”
    “Hi, Professor,” she said. “Dr. Pappas has been charged with sexual harassment.”
    “How do you know that?”
    “Everybody knows it.” She waved her hand in a big circle, indicating the whole world.
    “Do you know the specifics of the charges?” I asked, trying to sound professorial.
    “Uh…no, but harassment is harassment.”
    “Who preferred the charges?”
    “That information is confidential.” She looked shocked that anybody would even ask. She obviously didn’t know.
    I wanted to ask her why the name of the harassee should be confidential if the name of the harasser wasn’t, but that would just get me tied up in my underwear. Instead, I said, “To summarize, you know that a charge has been filed against Dr. Pappas, but you don’t know who filed it. You also don’t know the nature of the charge. You have no idea whether Dr. Pappas is guilty of the charge. And yet you have the right to harass him with your obscene shouting and obscene signs.”
    A circle of placard-carrying students formed around me as I spoke, and the expressions on their faces were not pretty. I looked from one to another and tried not to panic. They wouldn’t hurt an old woman—would they?
    The sumo wrestler appeared to be their ringleader. She spoke slowly, emphasizing each word. “We will not tolerate male pigs on this campus. You have been oppressed your whole life and are used to being oppressed, but our generation isn’t. Do you understand me?”
    I didn’t know I had endured a lifetime of oppression. I also couldn’t picture anybody oppressing her, but I understood her all too well. I also understood that it was time for me to leave. Mustering all the dignity I could, I walked between her and another student and on toward the