Wild Justice Part 6

"After all our witnesses have testified, Trenchant may examine her witnesses and the committee will cross.

Are there any questions?"

"Yes." Diana said firmly. "You have said that the witness are to be sworn by the court stenographer and I have no objection to that. However, I want it in the record that I was told both by the ombudsman and by you, Mr. Chairperson, that this would be a typical administrative hearing and that witnesses are generally not sworn. When they are, it is done by one of the hearing committee.

"I was further told that recording of the hearing would be by tape recorder. I find that neither of these two things are true.

"In addition, I want it recorded that I have requested several times that this hearing be open, and the chair has refused.

The Attorney General's Office has asked to be allowed to send an observer to this hearing. Their request was denied, but they were promised a complete transcript of it."

"OK," Henry brushed aside Diana's observations as if they were of no import, and continued, "we'll call our first witness."

Henry rose and went to get the Lyle Stone, chair of the Nutrition, Embryology and Radiology Department--NERD.

Lyle was seated directly opposite Trenchant and was sworn by the stenographer. Under questioning from the committee, he gave his name and position.

Dr. Lyle Stone was a man totally driven by ambition.

He treated people on two levels. If he needed something from you, he was most decent, even kindly; if not, he ignored you.

Quick to anger, he rarely checked facts. He took good care of himself, and at the age of 58, he regularly worked out at the gym and was seldom sick.

He was, however, short. Shorter than the average man, he tried to make up the height with bl.u.s.ter. This gave him not only a Banty rooster approach to life but also may have been why he resembled one.

"How did you become aware of the issue that this panel is investigating?"

Henry continued.

Lyle testified that two years previously, Dr. Randy Fecesi had come to him with two medical student feedback forms which he had found. "Students are required to fill out and bring to the NERD office a questionnaire type form that critiqued each of the faculty in each course and the course itself," he explained. . .

Student Feedback Forms were initiated at Belmont in the middle sixties. They were designed to allow the students to evaluate faculty and courses in response to student demand that they have a voice in their education. Although the professors of each course at Belmont routinely handed the forms out and collected them, they were never taken seriously by any department or dean unless they were uniformly derogatory to a course or professor and sometimes, even then, they were ignored.

Mostly, they were treated as a joke by the departments and a lost cause by the students who never saw any changes made as a result of their suggestions. The joke was propagated further when some wag arbitrarily added MUR between the S and FF, creating the adjusted acronym, SmurFF, from Student Feedback Form. From that time on, the forms were printed on blue paper.

". . .Randy said that he had found a SmurFF for the radiology course this year and one from last year that didn't look right to him. He and Dr. Heathson, who teach the course, wanted me to send them for handwriting a.n.a.lysis because he thought they had been written by Trenchant."

Lyle went on to explain at some length that Dr. Randy Fecesi and Dr. Ian Heathson were young faculty who were trying very hard to make the radiology course more modern and sophisticated.

These efforts, he a.s.serted, were thwarted by Trenchant and there was controversy and conflict because of her. . .

When Lyle Stone succeeded Jimbo Jones as head of NERD, he brought his post doc, Ian Heathson with him. No one on the NERD faculty was consulted and all of them were very upset that they were given no voice in a faculty selection. They soon learned that Ian was a special friend of their chairperson and quickly discovered that it was not wise to criticize him in any way.

Ian was a real nice, friendly fellow, fairly adept at his research specialty, nutrition (which was also Lyle's) but lacking knowledge and understanding of radiology.

Lyle put him in charge of the radiology course given to the freshmen medical students. This act was similar to throwing a child into the water and expecting it to learn to swim.

Diana had taught the lab portion of this course for several years.

Ian didn't learn very quickly. He tried, you have to give him that, but he was way out of his depth. The students, as kindly as possible, turned thumbs down on him. Not only that, but on their SMurFF's, they were highly critical of the lecture portion of the course, which Ian conducted, while praising Trenchant and the laboratory, especially the laboratory manual which she had written.

The manual had been written out of desperation by Trenchant on her home computer. Over the years, the radiology lab manual had degenerated into such a mess that it was difficult to use and impossible to understand--especially when most of the pages were unreadable. This was before the department obtained a copying machine and still used the old fas.h.i.+oned stencils.

So Diana wrote and ill.u.s.trated an entirely new manual and she registered the copyright on it. She offered this finished manual to Ian at no charge for use in the course and he grabbed it like the drowning man he was. The students had made their disgust well known to him and he realized that he did not have the knowledge or experience to produce an adequate laboratory manual in Radiology.

Things got better in the course. Ian was improving in his knowledge and lecturing. There was excellent cooperation between him and Trenchant. That is, until Randy Fecesi was brought in.

Randy came with perhaps even less ability in radiology than Ian, but where the students were sympathetic toward Ian, they were p.i.s.sed off by Randy. The SmurFFs they wrote concerning him were not kind.

Many reprimanded him for things he had said in lectures which were contrary to what the students read in textbooks. Hurt, angry and unable to get at the students, he turned on Trenchant. At first, Ian tried to stay neutral but eventually, Randy convinced him that the course must be reorganized and they had to start by redoing the laboratory manual.

His solution was to change the only part of the course that really worked!

Chapter 7

"Now what did you do with these SmurFFs that Dr Fecesi brought you?"

questioned Henry.

"At first, I just thought about them. Then I took them to Jimbo Jones who was chair of the department before me.

"I thought he might have some idea of what should be done and he, of course, knew Trenchant since she had been in the department during his tenure as chair."

Lyle continued, s.h.i.+fting in his chair so he appeared taller.

"Jimbo immediately took them to Mark Rogers who is the university attorney and Mark sent them out for a.n.a.lysis.

"I looked through other SmurFFs and picked out a couple that seemed strange, that didn't seem to me to be what students would write, and Jimbo found a couple in the nursing course and all those were sent out to the examiner.

"The doc.u.ment examiners reported that, to the best of their knowledge, Trenchant had written the SmurFFs we had sent them so I went to you, Henry, to the administration, and it was decided that I meet with her and give her an opportunity to resign. When she refused, I wrote the dean and he initiated the termination for cause action."

Henry appeared pleased, consulted his notes and asked if Lyle could explain Trenchant's conduct.

Certainly, Lyle would be happy to. His eagerness to answer this question lent strength to a skeletal system already overtaxed with maintaining a taller posture.

"It had to do with the problems in the radiology course.

Ian and Randy were trying to make the course better. She fought them on everything and finally she quit the course--said it was too much along with her other teaching responsibilities.

It was about a year ago that. . ."

Randy called another meeting to discuss the Radiology course changes.

Ian attended reluctantly. He was not convinced but Randy swept him along and Randy had Lyle's approval. All Ian had was a poor track record teaching the course.

Randy delineated the changes he was going to make in the manual.

The first one was that Trenchant's name would not appear on it.

Instead, it would be the product of the course directors, Ian and Randy.

He was quietly and firmly told by Trenchant that he did not have her permission to make any changes. The manual was copyrighted by her and would stay that way. He had the option to either use it or not, but he could not change it as he was indicating.

As for legitimate suggestions or ideas, she would certainly, as always, welcome constructive criticism and make the necessary changes herself.

This was not an arbitrary determination by Trenchant. Her manual was written expressly to teach a circ.u.mscribed area of the course.