20. Debt Trap - Lords of Serendipity

That Monday, clean-shaven, showered, wearing a washed and ironed shirt tucked into pressed pants, and finishing the Americano he’d been offered in the vestibule after arriving twenty minutes early, Jack was invited into the dean’s conference room for the emergency meeting he had requested. Given the seriousness of the matter before them, he had asked for the dean to attend, but the dean was not available. Instead it was his department chair and Helen, and also a third person Jack didn’t know, an Asian woman in a pink military-cut blazer and skirt.

The dean’s windowless conference room seemed larger than it had the last time Jack had been in it, in December, when he had met Helen and all of those squinching young women and men. The time he had daubed bay rum behind his ears before going in to discuss a minor academic integrity case. This one wasn’t minor.

Going into the STA 105 course records from the past three years, Jack had worked out his prediction about what had happened to a selection of STA 105 grades since Allard had become head TA. The prior Saturday, he’d tested it twice, and had been amazed with what his regression analysis was revealing.

He hadn’t felt like this since he had been an undergraduate statistics major working on problem sets. That had been the first time he heard the music in the noise, the music that his own calculations revealed as a pattern that could be explained and expressed with the clarity and solidity of numbers and equations. The world only heard noise, and he heard the music, and then, because of him, the world knew there was music. What a feeling! What a power! The purity and clarity of discovery, of prediction, determination, and the revelation of it all, of not just the music, but its cause, which, in this case, years later, looking at STA 105 records, led to outrage.

Outrage. Jack was outraged by the statistically determined fact that Allard Hamburger had been running a cheating scheme in STA 105 for several years.

With so many tutorial sections for so many large courses, and thousands of individual grade entries, he must have assumed no one would notice the perfect 1:1 correlation between students earning a 76 these past three years and having Allard Hamburger as their TA.

There was more to this than mere correlation.

There was causation.

Jack had discovered causation.

In any field, in any part of life itself, is there any greater feeling than discovering the cause of something, never mind something wrong in need of righting?

On the Sunday before the emergency meeting on campus, he had created a series of visualizations to present his findings, backed up by hard numbers and calculations, which he sent to his chair and Helen. He had wanted to forward the email to Allard, and nearly did so. But instead he went for a walk around his neighborhood near dusk, eating an apple, no less. Allard would vanish before the university could do anything. His escape wasn’t worth the tart pleasure Jack would have taken from imagining his contempt-filled face going blank at Jack’s findings. Justice for Adi Bhopal and his family meant more than Jack’s enjoying a small, sour victory over his criminal TA.

So instead of forwarding the message to Allard, Jack wrote an email to his ex-colleague, who was still in Zurich, to find out what he was working on these days. He’d also told Katrina, that same Sunday, that if she wanted to study abroad the following year she should get a summer job to help pay for it. She’d yet to reply, and for once Jack wasn’t worried, just as he wasn’t wearing bay rum behind his ears this morning for his meeting in the dean’s conference room. He wasn’t here to make more money for Katrina, or to get a date with Helen.

For three days now Jack had been moving through the world on behalf of justice—justice for a dead young man and justice for the 699 other desperate students who must have paid Allard hundreds of dollars each, to get a 76 and a guaranteed B in the course. Jack had discovered a massive, potentially lethal wrong in need of righting, and he was here to make the case for justice. If Elizabeth were still alive, she would have quoted something from a classic novel or a children’s book, or maybe from the Bible. But Jack needed no example to follow, not even Pascal. That true believer in both God and math could only get to 50–50 with his famous wager. Whereas Jack was already at 1:1 as the grounds for justice, and now he would make the case without turning to religion or philosophy or law. He had no need. He had statistics.

Jack, good morning and thank you for being with us. You know me, of course, and also your department chair. And Connie is the university’s general counsel. I think she’s going to take the lead here.

Thank you. Professor Bayern, good morning. As the associate dean noted, I’m here in my capacity as the university’s general counsel. If it’s okay with everyone, I’d like to start with a few questions.

She didn’t wait for anyone to respond.

Excellent. So, question one, Professor Bayern, concerns the findings you’ve shared with the university about alleged irregularities in grading practices associated with STA 105. Have you discussed these alleged irregularities with anyone?

No. I only sent my findings to my department chair and to Helen, to the associate dean.

Great. So, just to be clear, no student who may have been involved in what may have been an irregularity has been asked about anything pertaining to this matter, whether in the Compassionate Grading Protocol meetings you’ve been conducting or otherwise. Is that correct?

Yes.

Excellent. So, no one knows about these alleged irregularities except the people meeting about the matter today, correct?

Yes, said Jack.

Excellent, said the lawyer. Then I think we’re on to next steps, in terms of the decision that’s been made.

The decision’s already been made? What decision? said Jack. Who made it? You don’t want me to go over my findings first?

Before we go any further, can I query something else associated with your teaching of STA 105?

Sure. What is it?

Can you explain the circumstances under which you received a box of chocolates and bottle of alcohol from a student enrolled in a course you were teaching?

What are you talking about?

Are you suggesting there isn’t a box of chocolates and bottle of alcohol in your office?

How do you know that? How do you know it was from a student in that course? When did you go into my office?

According to our records, you did not report these gifts to the university.

Helen, what the hell is happening?

But when he looked over at her, and at his department chair, both were studying their screens.

Professor Bayern, can you explain why you accepted these gifts and your understanding of any associated expectations, on the student’s part?

What? No! It was a mistake—

Thank you for acknowledging your wrongdoing.

I’m not acknowledging anything. I can’t believe you went into my office! That’s mine! It’s private! I think the faculty association would be interested in hearing about this. It’s also not what I’m here to discuss.

If you want to activate your right to representation, which we fully respect, this meeting will end immediately. Is that your preference, Professor?

No. No. I just want to talk about what’s been going on in the course. It’s really bad.

We’re not interested in pursuing that, at this time.

But that’s why I’m here! I’m here to tell you about real wrongdoings at this university. You’ve seen my findings. For several years now, the course’s head TA, Allard Hamburger, has been selling grades—

Professor Bayern, in light of our findings and discussion today—

No! Wait! Let me speak.

Let him speak, said Helen.

Jack asked if they were really going to ignore the fact that Adi Bhopal was an STA 105 student who committed suicide the same night he’d been denied the chance to rewrite the exam. That he had been one of Allard Hamburger’s students who received a 76. That this was the exact same grade as a series of other students who also had Allard Hamburger for a TA. That all of them were now requesting refunds. Not for their tuition, Jack was now convinced, but for the money they’d paid Allard Hamburger to guarantee a grade of 76.

Connie, the general counsel, told him that it was public knowledge that the late student had left a note that read, Until death do us part. According to messages the family had since been posting widely, Adi had been close to marrying someone and the relationship had broken down.

The university had concluded, with confidence, and the support of the family, that Adi Bhopal’s suicide was not related in any way to STA 105.

But what if he killed himself because, I don’t know, whatever went wrong in STA 105 had ruined his relationship? The only way to find out would be to investigate.

Thank you, Professor, but we’ve reached another decision.

You’re afraid of bad publicity, aren’t you! If word gets out, it’ll hurt applications from places like India, won’t it. Or some congressman will find out and ask the university president to come to Washington for a hearing or maybe some MAGA celebrity will start tweeting about it.

That’s not my area of responsibility. We need to respect the family’s wishes and leave things there, said the lawyer.

How much did you pay them? To not sue the university?

No one answered him.

Instead, the lawyer explained that the university expected that Jack was in agreement with their intention, at this point, not to pursue discipline-related inquiries into anything associated with STA 105, which could include, yes, potential grading irregularities, and also, to be consistent and comprehensive, an inquiry into STA 105 professors accepting gifts from students. But instead of pursuing such an inquiry, Connie said, the university could do other things. Would he be interested in hearing about those?

Jack asked to step out of the conference room. He went to the stairwell. He waited. But Helen did not join him this time. Did he even want her to? Yes. To tell him she knew what was happening—to Adi, to so many other students, to himself—was wrong. And to tell him in a voice that was soft and full of promise, a voice not just remembering their legs touching under a wool blanket at the Christmas Gaudy, but inviting him to something beyond that lawyered autoclave of a room. Because didn’t Jack want that more than an investigation into the academic misconduct of Allard Hamburger? And didn’t he want more than just whatever they were offering him instead of that? He could have this, now, finally, with Helen. And Elizabeth, she would want that for him, wouldn’t she? Wouldn’t she? Look at him, trying to light a new fire with old ashes. And here Jack thought Hamburger was the evil actor in this story.

What an idea, imagining your late wife wanting you to be with a woman you had wanted when she was still alive. How much better, for him and for Katrina, for the world itself, if she were still alive. She would have encouraged him to press on and risk losing his job, risk losing the chance to keep Katrina at Haven. Because that was the right thing to do, and they would figure the rest out together. But Elizabeth wasn’t here. He had to figure this out on his own, and he didn’t have the careless spirit of a gamester, like a character in a Dickens novel. This wasn’t a Dickens novel. He needed money. He needed to keep Katrina at Haven. And there was money to be made. He could take a deal and walk away from the fallen world of the university and everything and everyone in it, including Helen. Jack returned to the conference room.

His paid administrative leave began immediately at the end of the meeting and continued until the final day of the semester, when he went on sabbatical for a full year and was given a dedicated research fund and a double merit increase to his base salary.

He was not due for a sabbatical for three more years; he hadn’t been given a research fund since he was first hired; he had never received a merit increase, never mind a double merit increase. The university wanted him to go away instead of doing something with his findings about the real cheating scandal in STA 105, and he was being rewarded for agreeing.

After the meeting, Helen texted that they could finally have another glass of wine, provided there was no work talk. She said it might lead to a gin and tonic, even. There it was, the promise. He knew what she meant. That time in the pantry, years before, which now felt low and dirty and betraying, and unsuccessfully pretending otherwise. Like the university itself.

He never replied to her.

And while he wasn’t exactly popular in the department, Jack was still surprised that no one had sent him any kind of note following his sudden departure from campus. Someone had to have noticed. Did they assume he had done something very wrong?

He’d never had such thoughts when Wei went on leave right after teaching STA 105 the previous year. Had Wei also figured out Allard’s cheating scheme and been paid off and sent away like Jack was?

If so, why were they still offering the course? Because they needed international students to keep enrolling and because no one had killed themselves yet? Was the university really that rotten? Jack didn’t need to calculate the probability that he was working for a laurel-wreathed debt trap.