DJ
I DO as I’m asked. Finally. When everyone is out of the house except me.
The whole debacle is deeply embarrassing. And even though I’ll bet everyone who lives in Orsen’s house has heard about the accusation against me, I never talk about the case. Never.
Part of me is hoping that the lawyer can’t take my call. He must be a busy guy, right?
No such luck.
“Daniel,” he says, his voice booming and confident. “It’s a pleasure to get you on the phone. I’ve read your file, and I think I can help.”
“Um, thank you, sir.” But I feel no relief, because I just don’t trust him. “I, um, know you don’t know me. But before we begin, I just need to tell you that I did not…do what they’re accusing me of.” I can’t even bring myself to say the word, because I don’t want it on my tongue. “So there’s no compromise I’m willing to make.”
“Whoa there, son. Let’s slow down just a little bit. I’m not going to ask you to compromise yourself in any way. What’s interesting to me about your case is how ridiculously the college has handled it. They haven’t given you a chance to say, ‘I didn’t do this.’ And that’s not right.”
Even though that’s all true, my heart is already pounding against my ribcage. I have never known real stress until this year.
“My first job will be to get the college to give us a private hearing.”
“They, um, haven’t been willing to do that, sir. The first lawyer my father spoke to couldn’t get anywhere with them.”
“I know. But you can’t defend yourself if they won’t hear you out. So my first job is to demonstrate all the ways that they’ve mishandled you. To defend you, I first have to go on the attack. We have to accuse the college of violating your rights.”
Now I’m starting to sweat, because attacking is the last thing I want to do. I just want the whole issue to fade away. “But if they drop their, um, claim, I’m hoping to stay here.”
“Of course you are. But unless we can make them own up to their failures, they’re going to just decide this thing behind closed doors and send you a letter with their decision. We have to make it clear that you didn’t get to tell your side of the story, and that you’re being mistreated. By the time this is over, I’m going to make sure everyone knows how poorly they’ve behaved.”
He waits for me to say something, but I’ve got nothing.
“At some point you and I are going to have to spend a couple of hours discussing the details of the night in question—last April eleventh. But today we’re not going to do that.”
“Okay,” I say quickly. I’m not looking forward to telling him the intimate details of my sex life.
“But today I want to ask you about August twentieth. The day the dean called your home in Huntington.”
“All right.” That’s another painful story, but at least there’s no nudity involved.
“Your file indicates that the phone call on August twentieth was the first communication you had from the college. Are you absolutely sure they didn’t reach out before then?”
“Yes sir.”
“So the phone rings out of the blue. And who’s on the other end of the line? Tell me exactly what happened.”
I think of this moment as The Day the Music Died. Just remembering it, my heart does a drum solo, because my father and I have gone over this a million times. If I’d handled everything more carefully on that summer day, everything might be different. “The caller was a secretary for the assistant dean of student services. I didn’t catch the secretary’s name. She said if I had thirty minutes to spare, the dean would like to speak to me. So I said that was fine.”
“You didn’t ask, ‘What is this about?’”
“No. I wish I had. But I don’t get calls from the dean’s office…”
“You were intimidated.”
“Hell yes.” I remember standing there in our kitchen, feeling worried. But I had an hour before my shift at the seafood restaurant where I wait tables in the summertime, so I just said I’d take the call. “The dean came on the line—”
“Assistant Dean Maria Lagos.”
“Right. She said she wanted to ask me some questions about the night of April eleventh.” I should have gotten off that phone and asked for a proper meeting. I should have told my parents there might be some kind of problem. But I didn’t do that. “I told her I didn’t know off the top of my head what night that was. She said it was the night of a party, and also a young woman had asked to stay in my room, and I said, ‘You mean Annie Stevens?’ And she said yes.”
“Let me stop you right there,” the lawyer said. “Did the dean ask your permission to tape the call?”
“No. She didn’t mention anything like that. And I don’t think she taped it, because there were times when she stopped asking me questions and said, ‘Just a moment,’ like she was trying to catch up with her notes.”
“Did she tell you she was taking notes?”
“I could hear the keyboard clicking.” I remember thinking she was a fast typist.
“Okay. What happened next?”
“She asked me about the early part of that night. The party was in the next entryway, where a lot of freshmen were serving drinks to other freshmen, so I was freaking out. There’s a rule against hard alcohol on Frosh Court, but nobody follows it.”
“What did you tell her?”
“The truth. I went to the party, and Annie was there. The dean asked if I drank alcohol and I said yes I drank some but not very much.”
“Did she ask you to quantify exactly how much? Did she talk about ounces, or ask you to count up the number of drinks?”
“No. She asked if I was drunk, and I told her I wasn’t.”
The lawyer asks me a couple more questions. He’s focused on procedure—what questions I was asked, and how precise they were. I get it—he’s trying to show the college that they didn’t gather enough information to figure out what happened that night.
But I just don’t see how this is going to help. The college isn’t trying to send me to jail. They’re only trying to decide if I can stay at Harkness. There are thousands of guys who’d like nothing more than to take my spot. The college can do whatever it wishes.
My father and I went over this, too.
“Daniel, at what point did you figure out that Annie Stevens had accused you of sexual misconduct?”
Maybe I’m slow, but it had taken a while before I’d figured out where the questions were leading. “Well, I was worried about the underaged drinking until the dean’s questions shifted to my dorm room. When she started asking me about Annie sleeping in my room, I didn’t know why she wanted to go there. Staying in someone else’s room isn’t against the rules.” I sighed. “I am the biggest idiot alive.”
The lawyer actually laughed. “No you’re not, son. You just don’t think like a criminal.”
I didn’t used to. But after someone accuses you of being one, it changes your entire outlook.
“Daniel, please tell me exactly how personal the dean’s questions became.”
My head begins to ache. “She made me give, uh, the play-by-play of our entire encounter. Who kissed who, which hands removed which clothes. I told her all this, but I was really nervous. It’s not an easy conversation with anyone, and of course I’d just caught on to the fact that someone had a problem with it. My first thought was that maybe Annie wasn’t eighteen or something. But that would be weird. It was second semester…”
“I’ll run a background check on her and we’ll rule that out. But what else did the dean ask?”
“After everything I described, she’d stop and say, ‘And how did she give consent for that? Was it verbal?’ And I had really good answers for almost all of those.” Because the whole encounter had been Annie’s idea.
“All right. And did you get the sense that the dean took careful notice of your responses?”
“I guess so. But I can’t be sure.”
“I see. So after this detailed conversation last August, what happened?”
I had the world’s most uncomfortable conversation with my parents. And I began to worry, and never stopped. “I got a letter five or six days later telling me I was on social probation.”
“Right. I have to tell you that I’ve read and re-read this letter, and it’s a pretty interesting document.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s incredibly specific about the probation they imposed on you—where you can and can’t go, and exactly how you should avoid contact with Miss Stevens. But on the subject of what it is that you’re supposed to have done, there’s nothing. I’ve never seen anything like it. Either it was written by someone who has no experience investigating sexual assault, or they’re being vague on purpose, because they’re not feeling confident about the accusation. And now they’ve let five months pass without deciding your case.”
Like I don’t know that.
“It’s possible that they think the case against you sucks, but they’re trying to be sure they give it adequate attention anyway. There’s a law called Title Nine. Most people think it’s about school sports, but it’s broader than that. Sexual discrimination and harassment.”
“Okay.”
“These past few years colleges have been threatened with losing certain sources of federal funding if they don’t demonstrate that they’re fighting harassment and also sexual assault. And that’s a fine idea, right? But colleges—even well-funded ones like Harkness—keep proving that they have no clue how to investigate sexual violence. And when they get it wrong, it hurts everyone. Think about it. There are girls who are raped, but the college bungles the investigation. On the other hand, there are guys like you who are at the wrong end of bungled investigations.”
“Federal funding,” I repeat slowly.
“That’s right. Just like everything in life. Money is the driver.”
My head gives a fresh stab of pain, and I wonder if it’s even possible to get out of this mess unscathed. When I first learned that Harkness College might throw me out for something I didn’t do, I still didn’t quite realize the seriousness of the situation. But then my father explained that my Harkness transcript would show that I’d been suspended for disciplinary reasons.
In other words, if Harkness kicks me out, I’ll be untouchable.
“Well, Daniel, we’re going to have to leave it here for now, because I have a lunch meeting. It was a pleasure speaking to you. If I have any more questions for you before I press the college for a hearing date, can I reach you at this number?”
“Sure,” I say. “Anytime.” I’d promise anything right now if it meant getting off this call.
He tells me he’ll let me know if he gets anywhere, and then I thank him and hang up.
I spread out on my bed and stare at the ceiling. This lawyer number two—Jack—he sounded more knowledgeable than the family lawyer who’d first tried to help sort me out. But it might not even matter. The last guy explained to me that I was just another customer, and Harkness was free to decide at their whim that they didn’t want me anymore.
Last summer, even as my parents were freaking out, I kept thinking that it was really just a big misunderstanding. I honestly believed the college would call me back and say, “Never mind. You weren’t the guy we were looking for.”
But that never happened. Two lawyers later, my panic had shifted into something heavier, like dread.
It’s lunchtime, but I can’t enter most of the dining halls on campus, because they’re inside the twelve residence houses. And my “agreement” with the college states that I can’t enter the houses until my case is decided. So I eat a lot of sandwiches from the deli.
I’m not hungry right now anyway.
