Freshman Just Wanted Dinner — Until Three Bullies Made a Mistake That Cost Them Everything
Chapter 30
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"I know," Claire said."That is not a student grievance," Carol said. "That is a civil matter with institutional consequences.""I know," Claire said.Carol looked at the clock: forty-five minutes to the hearing. "I need to make two phone calls," she said. "Right now. Before we go in." She looked at Claire. "Are you ready for this to become larger than a hearing?"Claire thought about Eleanor at eighteen, eating pie in a diner because a door was closed to her. She thought about Rachel Brennan, Devin Harris, Priya Okafor—three names in three folders, three people who had packed up and left and never known there was someone with legal standing to fight for them. She thought about Dot holding an envelope for thirty-five years without knowing exactly when the right time would come, only trusting that it would."Yes," Claire said. "I'm ready."The first call Carol made was to Nate Aldrich. Nate Aldrich was forty-four years old; he was a reporter for the state's regional education desk. He had been covering higher education for eighteen years. He was the kind of journalist that institutions respected and were also quietly afraid of: not because he was aggressive, because he was accurate.Carol had known him for a decade: not as a source, but as a professional contact—the kind of relationship built on mutual respect and clear boundaries. She had never called him with a tip in ten years. She called him now.She spoke for three minutes. She told him nothing that was not already part of the documented institutional record or the publicly available terms of the gift agreement: she told him about the hearing; she told him that the terms of the Eleanor Matthews gift agreement were material to the proceedings and were a matter of public institutional record. She did not tell him what to do; she did not need to. Nate Aldrich had been covering education for eighteen years: he knew what a breach of a major gift agreement by a board member looked like; he also knew that the National Education Foundation board required its nominees to have a clean record on exactly this kind of fiduciary matter. He said he would be there.The second call was to the office of Hartwell's president. Carol did not speak to the president directly; she spoke to his chief of staff. She said that the hearing this morning involved evidence of a coordinated pattern of harassment targeting scholarship students; she said there was documentation suggesting a board member had prior knowledge and may have participated in directing the pattern; she said the gift agreement governing the Eleanor Matthews scholarship fund was implicated; she said the president might want to be present. The chief of staff said he would pass it along immediately.