CHAPTER 12

Henry called the dean of the medical school, Sam Broadhurst, MD, and asked him to identify himself and his position at Belmont for the record, as the witness before him had done.

The dean was a swarthy complected, strongly built individual. At 52, his reputation as a ruthless administrator was well known. Just as well known was his reputation for fairness. Where he was faulted was the way he backed up, no matter what, the medical school chairmen (there were no women) who along with him were called `The Boy's Club' by the rest of the medical school faculty.

The Boy's Club often went on retreat. At these meetings, held in luxurious surroundings, policies and plans were decided and everyone fell into line, or else. There were those among the faculty that believed that Sam Broadhurst demanded from the chairs, and took himself, an oath in blood. This was because they invariably backed each other up publicly even though privately, they didn't.

Henry knew that the dean was not happy with the way the Trenchant situation had been handled. The dean was royally pissed that Lyle had gone over his head to Mark and himself instead of keeping the matter in the medical school and dealing with it there. He was further incensed that they had decided to charge Diana and terminate her before he was even apprised that the situation existed. By the time he was brought into the process, it was to late for him to do anything but go along with it.

So Henry wasn't surprised when the dean made it quite clear that he was not consulted until the central administration had already decided to terminate Diana. This was so obvious that everyone in the room realized that he was just doing his job within the system but that didn't mean that he liked it.

Having thus vented his spleen about the way the affair had been handled, Dean Broadhurst clearly and forcibly added his opinion to that of Lyle's in almost a carbon copy of Lyle's relevant testimony. Clearly and succinctly without the wandering, self serving side trips taken by Lyle, the dean cast the party line with all the skill of the accomplished angler he

was.

All right. Well done, thought Henry, with transparent relief. At least things were going all right thus far with this witness.

Esther took over the questioning and asked, "Would five or six SmurFF critiques out of around 200 have enough weight to influence your process of evaluating faculty performance in a course?"

The dean sidestepped, "The ones in question were pretty damning comments."

Esther persisted, "Have you seen the other evaluations? I mean the ones that are believed to be authentic student feedbacks?"

Here Dean Broadhurst intentionally contradicted Lyle's testimony. "No. The student comments are summarized by the department secretaries and I see the summaries. There is also a summary of the positive and negative comments and a summary of the numerical evaluation."

Jane looked at Henry to see his reaction. She remembered that Lyle had testified that all the SmurFFs were given to, and reviewed by, the dean.

Perhaps, Sam Broadhurst thought to himself, it is all I can do for her. The panel has the information, if they choose to hear it. If there was manipulation of the evaluation process, it wasn't a product of five

`suspicious' ones out of some two hundred that were considered valid.

Statistically, the evidence stunk and he knew it. He also knew a lot more. Two of his children had gone through the medical school when Diana taught in the radiology laboratory. The dean remembered the many occasions he had seen fit to compliment Trenchant on her teaching, saying that he was giving her this critique first-hand from one or the other of his children.

Perhaps, thought the dean, if witchcraft was the real charge, the panel would insist that it be proven.

Or maybe not. The administration appeared to be out for blood and he was sure that Lyle was still licking the wounds of a few short months ago. . .

He had Lyle on the carpet. He had summarily called him down to his office to read him the riot act.

"Here are the letters I've received from three top publishers of medical texts. Each one of them protests the plagiarism that a medical student told them your people have committed in preparing course material.

"I went to the radiology lab after I received the first letter and talked to some students. Although no one wanted to admit to contacting the publishers, they did show me the areas in their manual and notes that had been copied directly from different texts without citation.

"They also showed me the notebooks filled with diagrams that had been copied from a published atlas. Again, nowhere in the book was there any mention of, or credit given, to the source. Hell, your guys didn't even get permission to photograph the material!"

The dean continued telling Lyle that quite a sum of money would have to change hands with the publishers to keep this thing quiet.

"It must be her," Lyle whined when he could get a word in. "She must have put the students up to writing the publishers." The dean knew who he meant. Lyle was a chronic complainer. "Did Trenchant put your boys up to plagiarism too?" ridiculed the dean. "I understood from you that she was no longer in the radiology course."

"She's not, but the students from previous years have told this year's students about her and they all go to her when they don't understand something.

"She's really a menace to Randy and Ian. One day she even got a classroom and held a review just before an exam. I got wind of it and sent Ann Biggot to audit. Ann said that most of the radiology class showed up. The students told Ann afterwards that they had been the ones to ask for the review.

"Now you know how that must have hurt Ian's feelings. His reviews were only attended by a handful of the students and no one came to Randy's."

"You should be able to handle a situation like that. Tell her to stop it if you think it undermines your faculty."

Lyle was not a happy camper. He left, enraged. As soon as he reached his office, he called for Ian.

"Ian, I know you've got a lecture in a few minutes so I'll be brief. After

the lecture, I want you to tell the students that they must not consult Diana anymore because she is not involved in teaching radiology and is much too busy to be bothered.

Also, you lay it on the line about your job. You tell them that unless your critiques improve, you are out. Work on their feelings. Most of the students like you and would hate to have you lose your job on account of them.

"After you finish that, you and Randy get in here. I want to talk to you both about that lab material you plagiarized."

When the panel had finished its brief examination of the dean, Diana simply said, "I have no questions." She understood the constraints he was under and appreciated how much he had tried, in spite of them, to help. He had given the panel some vital information. The question was, did they hear it? Dean Broadhurst was excused and the next witness was called.