CHAPTER 36

True to form, Henry adjourned the second hearing with lies-- it didn't matter, he reflected, we have the power.

The hearing panel met the next day. Each person was given a copy of the report that Henry had prepared. "Read it and when you have finished, come over here and sign this original. I will require that you turn in your copies today. You are to keep this report in confidence."

"When is Diana to be notified?" Timidly, Esther asked the question, raising her eyes from the document she was reading.

"In good time. When it is deemed appropriate." Henry was terse in his reply, warning that no further questions from the other members of the committee would be tolerated.

Following this, Esther sent a letter to The Pope asking him not to terminate Diana. Later, she would show copies of this letter to the staff and faculty women who criticized her for signing such a malicious report. "We had to sign it. We had no choice, but see--I tried to help her!"

Henry sent a copy of the hearing panel's report to Diana late in March. It was in the form of a memorandum addressed to The Pope. Even though the report had been signed early in February, it was dated March 31st, as were all the signatures at the end.

The report of six pages had four parts: Factual history; Procedures followed; Findings on considerations; and Recommendations. Surprise, surprise--after maintaining in two separate hearings that the committee only gave a report and would not recommend any action.

Actually there was little in the report that came as any surprise. The so-called `Factual history' was a composite of the testimony of Lyle, Ian and Randy. It was carefully written. It reported that, "Lyle had discovered several `suspicious' student feedback forms. . ." when in fact he had said two.

The report was redolent with accusation. Phrases such as ". . .she forged. . ." and ". . .department could not tolerate forgery. . ." were found throughout and put in a context difficult to justify. One of these sentences read: "Given the opinion of the handwriting experts that she had `forged

student course evaluations in a manner designed to denigrate the performance of co-faculty members', the chairman of NERD decided to seek termination for cause." Thus the document examiners were not only given credit for identifying a person's handwriting, but Henry claimed they were able to read the intent of the person whom they said wrote the material examined. Nowhere in the hearing were their clairvoyant abilities established.

Indeed, the entire section contained nothing of the events as testified to by Diana and her witnesses.

The section on the `Procedures followed' was again taken from what Henry had decided were the procedures followed and wickedly slanted against Diana. It did not mention that the reason thirty-two additional standards were sent to the second document examiner was because he could not make a decision on the basis of the standards sent to the first one. Instead, it claimed that the second document examiner confirmed the results of the first. It also omitted to add that the standards sent were abysmally poor copies from microfiche, covered a period of 25 years and included handwriting and printing of many different people.

Henry thought the section called `Findings on considerations', was a gem. After he had finished writing it, he had leaned back in his chair and mentally patted himself on the back. Here was contained the only mention that there had been other testimony entered into the hearing. Here, in the entire six page report, only 10 lines were devoted to the witnesses for Diana. The testimony of Sarah, he tersely dismissed with: "One student witness identified one of the suspect critiques and claimed that she (the student) had written it, but the claim was not substantiated because the student would not have her handwriting examined."

Months later, the investigator for the Attorney General would note that incident in the transcript of the hearing and make the following comment in her report. "Did the committee really expect that the hired experts could, at a point when opinions had been stated under oath, seriously undertake a fresh analysis of the questioned document?"

Henry's report gave no indication that the standards were unauthenticated or why Diana was not asked to write for the document

examiners to produce authenticated ones.

All of the testimony of Diana was totally ignored. It was as if she had never appeared at the hearing--a non-person status like that maintained against her by her department since the accusation was first made.

Of course it follows that the `Recommendation' section would state, true to the faculty handbook's rhetoric, that termination was recommended since Diana had demonstrated a lack of professional and moral fitness.

THE COURT AND ATTORNEY GENERAL