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Death Gets an "F"

By Terri Main

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Summer in the Central Valley arrives early and leaves late. Its steaming fingers clutch at the land fighting desperately against the approach of winter. So it was that in October Cindy Martin still found herself trudging across the lawn at Pinewood College taking a zig-zag path trying to stay in the shade of the oak trees.
The heat soaked past her skin and lodged in her body. She walked faster. She fixed her eyes on the door to her office. It wouldn’t be long now. Another thirty seconds and the blessed cool of the air conditioning would sweep over her and make her feel normal.
She reached for the doorknob. The door burst open knocking her back. She lost her balance and sat down heavily on the concrete ramp.
“Oh, Ms. Martin. I didn’t know you were there. I was just talkin' to Mr. Sarley. And he gets me so p--” Jake Foreman, star quarterback for the college’s championship team, reached down and pulled Cindy upright and picked up her scattered books as he continued, “… well so… mad. He is so – so – I’m sorry Ma’am I can’t say what I want to say in front of a lady.”
“Then maybe it is best left unsaid anywhere,” Cindy said as she took a mental inventory of her books, her papers, her arms and legs. She just turned 55. Getting up and down was hard enough when it was intentional.
“I guess you’re right, but still, that ba – er – man just makes me so mad. Okay, he’s right, but why does he have to be so – so – hateful about it,” Jake glanced up at the clock tower across from Cindy’s office. “I’ve got to go. I’m late for practice. And coach is big on being on time.” Jake ran off toward the gym. Cindy pushed through the door and took a moment to luxuriate in the cool air for a second before opening her office door.
Cindy dumped her books on her desk. Her work area was a jumble of papers, books, journals, curios, pens, notepads and somewhere under it all a computer. A few more books randomly scattered on her desk just added to the effect, like a piece of abstract art.
She looked across the office to Emily Janson’s desk. She had an organizer with paper clips in one drawer, stamps in another, pens in the pen holder, and her stapler was lined up directly with the desk pad. Cindy wanted to go over and tear something up or at the very least, set the stapler at a 37-degree angle to the edge of the desk.
Before she followed up on that thought, she decided to talk to Eric Sarley. Eric was an old-timer at the college. He had in 25 years and a calendar in his desk drawer with the days marked off to retirement. He was a good scholar, a good researcher, a good department chair and a passable teacher. Nevertheless, he didn’t seem happy.
Cindy attended the same church as Eric and his wife Janice. Janice and Cindy served on a number of committees together. Janice became Cindy’s best friend. Eric stayed on the fringes of church life. He was at all the functions and gave liberally in the offering, but that was about it. He never did anything beyond the minimum.
“Eric, I ran into a friend of yours on the steps. I should say he ran
into me. I must say, he wasn’t very happy with you.”
“Oh, he’s just mad because I caught him cheating,” Eric pushed a paper at Cindy. It didn’t surprise her. Jake was a nice kid, but all he thought about was football. She suspected his girlfriend wrote one of his papers for her class, but could never prove it.
“What did he do?”
“He must have bought a term paper for my class,” Eric shook his head. “The tip off came when he wrote, ‘the theme of illusion versus reality in Hamlet is both provocative and disturbing in its appeal to the existential quest for meaning in a random world.’ Can you imagine Jake using a phrase like “existential quest.”
Cindy laughed, “No, I can’t, but that’s not quite enough to prove plagiarism.”
“Well, I have other means,” He turned his laptop around so Cindy could see the screen. “Meet the Sarley CheaterBeater program. I’ve worked on it for the last six months. The program identifies language usage patterns in written work and compares it to the student’s known writing. It’s still in beta, but I’ll be using it in class this year. It has the added advantage of being able to trace the paper back to the source so, if the seller is a student, we can nail him. Unfortunately, you have to have a writing sample from that person to trace it back. I don’t have enough samples yet. However, I’m entering several strong possibilities from my past classes. If you have people you suspect, I’d appreciate you giving me some of their samples.”
“So, you confronted Jake with his fraud, and he got angry from a guilty conscience?” Cindy ignored Eric’s suggestion. She took student confidentiality seriously.
“Actually, he suggested that if I didn’t want the alumni association to burn down the Language Arts building or something, I would have to certify him to be able to play next Sunday. I guess it’s some sort of play-off. I wouldn’t know. I follow baseball.”
“What did you tell him?”
“I told him that no half-baked Joe Namath wannabe would tell me how to run my class. I suggested that he start practicing the words, “Do you want fries with that?”
Cindy shook her head, “That’s pretty harsh.”
Eric pushed back in his chair and put his feet on the desk. “What can I say, I’m a plain spoken man.”
Cindy hated those words. Too many devout churchgoing folk used that phrase to excuse rudeness.
“I guess, I tend to believe the proverb that says, “A soft answer turneth away wrath.”
“That’s the difference between you and me. I don’t care about the wrath of these idiots. They are so stupid they can’t get into a real college so they come to the community college.”
Those words stung Cindy. She spent her first two years at a community college out of financial necessity and found the education to be the equivalent of and, in some ways, superior to anything she had at the university. It was what drew her to teaching at a community college.
“Eric,” she said, “If you think that way about the students and the school, why do you work here?”
“It’s the paycheck, but that could all change. This program could make me a fortune. Cheating and plagiarism are epidemics on college campuses. A recent study found that seventy percent of business majors admitted cheating. Humanities students logged in at forty percent, but they may just have read enough to feel guilty about it and lied to the survey takers. A good workable tool to spot cheaters would make the inventor a fortune. I plan to be that inventor. After that first royalty check, I’m out of here. “
For Cindy, teaching was a vocation in the old sense of that word. It was her calling. She approached her lessons with a reverential awe. It disturbed her whenever she met a teacher who did not share her sense of mission, for whom it was just another job with good benefits and a two-month vacation in the summer. Cindy taught summer school.
“Well,” Cindy said, trying to avoid saying something she would have to repent for later, “good luck with that. I’ve got to get to class.” Class didn’t start for another 15 minutes, but she figured she’d have to get there sometime so it wasn’t exactly lying. Okay, it was deceptive so she added. “I’ve got a few minutes, but I still need to get things together before I go.”
Cindy went back to her office. She pushed some roll sheets into her already over stuffed pink polka dotted tote bag. She smiled at how incongruous the bag was with the rest of her subdued appearance. She was the very model of the reserved school teacher in her tailored suits and nondescript dresses. She wished she could dazzle people with some sort of distinctive quirkiness. That wasn’t professional, and she was nothing if not professional.
The tote was a concession to a more flamboyant side that she struggled to acknowledge. It was almost 20 inches long and a good 14 inches deep. It had a pouch on one side just large enough for her laptop. Inside were books, old assignments, miscellaneous memos, fliers, and other academic junk mail. Outside was a pale, pink background with black polka-dots.
Eric’s office door was closed when she passed it, but the walls were paper thin. She heard him apparently talking on the phone as she passed.
“No, I will not back off for the sake of the team,” he shouted. “I caught your player cheating, and you got him the paper.” A pause.
“I don’t care if you are going to the Super Bowl,” he said in his own sarcastic way. “You are through at this school. You are through with the team. When I get through with you, you will be lucky to manage a little league team”
He was probably speaking to the coach. A cheating scandal could send even a tenured teacher packing. Coach Williams was still on probation.
Another pause. “Don’t you threaten me,” Eric shouted. “I’ve been threatened by scarier people than you.” She heard the phone slam down.

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