CHAPTER 38

The investigation by the Attorney General continued. When she tried to interview potential witnesses at Belmont, she was prevented by the administration. "Do not even talk with her," was the gag order that went out from the central administration of Belmont to every chair and director. These lesser administrators were told to alert their departments or units and advise all faculty, staff and students not to cooperate in her investigation.

For a while, the investigation lagged. It was hoped that as tempers cooled and reason reasserted itself, the university would be more receptive to the questions posed by the A.G. It was, after all, to their benefit to answer the questions. It was an opportunity to get their position known because the report, when completed, would be sent to the EEOC. It would have considerable influence on research grants applied for by Belmont faculty.

The cooling off period solved nothing. Belmont administration was adamant. They had done the right thing. There was nothing to investigate. The incident had ended. The Pope had spoken.

Actually, The Pope was doing more than speaking--he was engaged in composing excuses and explanations. Supporters of Diana had sent the Judge's Order, or excerpts from it, to state legislators, faculty, staff, students, alumni, trustees and any other person that had expressed interest in the lawsuit. This had resulted in hundreds of letters and phone calls to The Pope and members of his administration as well as to the Board of Trustees.

"What is going on?" One of the first callers demanded, having insisted, and gotten The Pope on the line. "You fired a good teacher after a judge ruled that she had not received a fair hearing?"

"Our hearing panel gave her a fair hearing, sir. The newspapers have just blown this up to sell papers," The Pope replied, holding back his anger with difficulty and making his voice sound terribly knowledgeable. "The judge said you didn't. I saw his order. Was the hearing open? Did you give her all the documents she requested, or not?" The caller was insistent.

"Well, sir, it's not that simple. Our policy is to protect the employee so we always have closed hearings. There was no need to produce the documents in question. The hearing panel was confident that they were not needed."

"I don't care about how your hearing panel or how your policy goes. I'm asking about an excellent teacher who has served our university for nearly a quarter of a century. If she did what you have accused her of . . . good God, man! Five out of thousands--what difference could that make? You've made yourself look silly."

The Pope took no more calls after that except from the trustees. He could not escape their critical views but with the help of his handpicked chairman of the board, he managed to placate most of them.

One secretary was placed full-time answering letters and the Vees were called on to answer the phone calls and talk to any one who came to the offices. Consumption of antacid increased astronomically in "Vice Alley"-

-lair of the Vees.

PR man, Alastar and all the Vees were carefully coached to suggest to the callers that Diana Trenchant had really done something unspeakable and that the charge that was aired was "only the tip of the iceberg." They also were told to hint concerning her motives. She was "thought to have so desired the chairmanship of the department. . ." or "she was delusional in her assertion that she had written any course material, etc. . ." or "she was not really the type of woman that normal women, those with husbands or boyfriends, wanted to associate with. . ." or. . .

Meanwhile, back at the court, legal papers piled up anew. Diana felt helpless, drawn along in a maelstrom of chaos. A veritable barrage of verbiage flew to the court, like guided missiles, from both attorneys. They were couched in legal parlance and cushioned on expensive, patterned vellum. For every submission, there was a filing fee, hours of research and multiple law-firm billings. For each batch of documents sent to the court, copies were made to send to the opposing attorney, the file and sometimes, even the plaintiff.

Occasionally, a hearing on one or another of the various motions was called. When this happened, the lawyers and the plaintiff were joined by

the judge, his clerk and the court stenographer.

Each attorney blew smoke--substantial as ghost poop. The judge sat in the air high above the arena and pondered. At times, he would interrupt and admonish. Periodically he would ask a question and these were the interesting moments as each attorney had a different answer.

The lawyer for the defense only knew what he had been told by Henry Tarbuck and Henry only knew what he had been told by Lyle.

Diana's attorney knew only what she had told him and it was obvious there was a lot that he hadn't remembered. How little the truth counted in these proceedings, Diana thought as she listened to the screw up. Neither of these men, who are being questioned and are the only ones allowed to speak, were at Belmont when these events were occurring. Most of the time they are way out in left field with their answers. And here I sit, mute because the system demands it, unable to clear up the confusion. All this money spent and the judge still doesn't understand what the SmurFFs are. He asked for clarification and got gibberish.

There's the gavel. One more useless hearing is over with.

Then, just as winter was getting a firm grip on the land, the Attorney General released her report. Diana and her supporters were jubilant. The local paper printed and the TV and radio blared: "A strongly worded report from the A.G.'s office to President Pope maintains that professor was fired unjustly."

The A.G.'s thirty page comprehensive Letter of Determination (LOD), made it clear right at the beginning that the Belmont administration had refused to cooperate in the investigation. It emphasized that, "The University declined to make available people and information." At the end of the LOD, it reiterated Belmont's non-cooperation.

The LOD went on to state that the University had held Termination for Cause Hearings. Sworn testimony was taken which had been completely transcribed by a court reporter. This transcript and the court records relating to the illegal termination suit were used in this investigation since the Belmont administration refused to cooperate with the Attorney General.

It took the form of a letter to The Pope. In stark contrast to Henry's

report, the LOD reviewed the history of the allegations against Diana, giving the charges and the response to these charges, equal weight and importance. This information was from the transcript which contained the sworn statements of all the university personnel involved in the hearing-- those people who were prevented by the administration from talking to the

A.G. investigator. It also reviewed the testimony of Diana and her witnesses. Reference was made to the testimony of the three document examiners--two presented by Belmont, the affidavit of the one submitted by Diana at the second hearing.

The point was made early on that the specific charge which resulted in termination was that Diana had written seven evaluations out of some one thousand submitted. Five of these were alleged to have injured two faculty members. It emphasized that testimony indicated that there were no performance problems with Diana. ". . .testimony from both sides established that she was highly regarded by her students, was very dependable and a hard worker."

It noted that while expert witnesses, the document examiners and the university attorney, were used to testify against Diana, she was not allowed an attorney to conduct a competent cross examination. Stating that even though supportive documents were not presented at the hearing, "the committee accepted testimonial evidence on the contents of them," it concluded that ". . .this represented the most serious deprivation of fundamental fairness that occurred. Any concept of a fair administrative hearing, even one conducted without regard to strict rules of evidence, could not include the admission of testimonial evidence of the contents of documents which were available only to the party presenting the evidence."

Commenting on the dissatisfaction of the committee with the testimony of the first document examiner, the LOD stated that, "Rather than reject the testimony and find Trenchant innocent, the committee continued the hearing and hired another document examiner. This one disputed the findings of the first and required more standards. The documents provided by Belmont were exceedingly poor copies of file contents, much of which was over twenty years old. Most of these so-

called standards contained the handwriting of more than one person. At no time was any evidence presented that showed the standards sent by the administration to the handwriting analysts to be the writing of Diana."

Remarking on the fact that the committee was chaired by Henry Tarbuck who had already decided that Diana was guilty, the A. G. wrote, "The committee applied different rules of evidence to her and her witnesses, it badgered them and cautioned them against giving hearsay testimony.

"The committee rejected direct evidence by one student who testified under oath that she had written one of the `suspect' documents. It ignored the testimony of Diana as well as that of her witnesses."

Then the LOD turned to the report from the hearing committee that Henry had authored. One paragraph stated: "The effect of the suspect critiques on the two people who were said to have been hurt by them had not been assessed, but did affect the individuals involved." To this, the

A.G. declared, "One questions the committee's findings as an accurate reflection of the evidence. No underlying facts were stated by the committee that explain its findings that `individuals were affected,' nor does the committee state how it could make that finding while stating that it had not examined the effect."

As precedents or comparison, the LOD reported that no penalties were imposed on two male Belmont faculty members, one who had altered promotion papers, the other convicted of child molestation. It quoted the testimony of Stacy Denton, the university psychologist. She had declared she knew of many instances of faculty misconduct more serious than what was alleged in this case. Those people had not been terminated.

Concluding that the university's stated explanation for terminating Diana was not worthy of credence, the report found there existed probable cause for sex and age discrimination and disparate discipline by Belmont against Diana.

The LOD was sent to the regional EEOC office which accepted it and confirmed the acceptance with the A.G. by phone. The newspapers and television reporters had a field day with it. Diana and her supporters felt vindicated beyond measure. Almost everyone believed that it was all over-

-that Diana had won. Congratulatory letters and phone calls flowed to Diana and Belmont University administration was given a verbal drubbing.