Bully Yanked The Freshman's Ponytail — Didn’t Know She Was Trained in Krav Maga
Chapter 23
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The panel called a recess: 20 minutes.Claire sat in the hallway outside the conference room. Marsh sat beside her, Sophie sat on her other side, and Diane Foster sat two chairs down. Nobody said very much. Claire held the navy ribbon in her hands. She had untied it from her wrist that morning; she had not put it back in her hair, she was just holding it.She thought about the last ten days: about the dining hall and the hallway and the library floor, about 30 people who looked away, about Sophie who had come anyway, about Diane who had kept the letter for 11 months because she could not make herself throw it away, about Will Garrett who had sent a video in the middle of the night because someone had asked him not to fight but just to be accurate. She thought about what Marsh had said about institutions protecting themselves, about the one person in every institution who still remembered what it was for.She thought about her grandmother.The door at the end of the hallway opened. Claire heard the footsteps before she saw her: steady and unhurried, the footsteps of someone who had walked into difficult rooms for most of her adult life and had never once needed to rush.Nora Whitfield came down the hallway. She was 71 years old, her hair fully white, wearing a plain gray jacket and dark slacks. Her posture was the posture of someone who had spent 24 years in uniform and had never entirely left it behind. On the lapel of her jacket, slightly above the left breast pocket, was a small metal badge: Columbus Police Department, badge number 1974, worn and polished and real. She had carried it for 50 years; she had never found a reason to put it away permanently.She walked to where Claire was sitting and sat down in the empty chair beside her. She did not say anything for a moment. Then she put her hand over Claire's hands where they were holding the ribbon, just for a second. Then she sat straight and looked at the closed conference room door.Marsh looked at her; she looked at him."Alan Marsh," he said."Nora Whitfield," she said.They looked at each other the way two people look at each other when they have never met but recognize something in common."Prosecutor," she said."Eleven years," he said, "before teaching.""Columbus PD," she said. "Twenty-four years."He nodded once. Neither of them said anything else.The panel reconvened. Dr. Ellison called the room to order. He said the panel had reviewed the secondary camera footage from the library fire exit system. He said the footage, while not providing the clarity of the primary system, corroborated the sequence of events described by Ms. Whitfield and confirmed by Ms. Nguyen.He said the panel had also noted that the primary camera footage had been deleted on Wednesday morning—two days after a formal preservation request had been submitted by Ms. Whitfield and received by three university offices. He said the panel considered this deletion to be a matter requiring separate investigation.Derek's advisor started to speak. Dr. Voss looked at him; he stopped.