Chapter 83

Phil left Clark Hall and immediately let out a string of curses. Not only had he got into a battle he likely couldn’t win, he’d left his fucking umbrella sitting beside his chair in the classroom. He didn’t even have a hood he could pull over his head. He was soaked by the time he got to the library.

Of course the air conditioner was on full blast but Phil finally caught a piece of luck. One of the privacy rooms was vacant so he slipped inside and pulled out his laptop. He was glad Hailey had insisted on a waterproof backpack. He logged onto the school’s intranet and found the section set aside for Dr. Alex Hudson’s awe-inspiring work. He typed in his debit card number and downloaded the file he would need. He gritted his teeth when he saw that the file format wasn’t compatible with any application he owned.

A little research told him he would have to either find a torrent and steal the application or drop an additional $75 for a legal download.

“Cocksucker,” Phil muttered. He walked out and asked the library technician if the school had a copy of InDesign available for student use. Phil had never heard of the program. The technician pointed him to a single terminal. He followed Phil over, opened up the file and hit the print button. The 300 pages cost Phil $30 to print. He growled when he read the opening paragraph.

“Is this the only terminal in the entire library with that program?” he asked the tech.

The tech nodded and told Phil it wasn’t something that the average student would use. He suggested Phil head over to the communications department because the program was mostly used for graphic layout.

Instead, Phil logged out and headed back to Clark. He had another class there in 45 minutes anyway. Instead of heading to the sixth floor where his class was scheduled, he headed to the 10^th floor and walked into the dean’s office.

The outer office was empty because the work-study students wouldn’t be given their assignments until later in the week. He knocked on the door and heard Victoria Andruzzi yell for him to come in. She smiled when she saw Phil Warner and broke into laughter when she saw the state of his clothing and hair.

“You look like a drowned rat, Mr. Warner,” she said, shaking her head. Her laughter stopped when she saw the look on his face. “What brings you to my office?”

He opened up his backpack and gently set the 300-page “textbook” on her desk.

“Did you approve this, Dr. Andruzzi?” he asked in a tight voice. “This is for Dr. Hudson’s Contemporary Management Principles class.”

She looked at the stack of papers and back up to Phil Warner.

“I figured you’d already been apprised of our, let’s call it a discussion, after class today,” Phil continued. “Suffice it to say, the course outline will not give us an overview of management principles – except in how to make a business succeed by doing everything opposite of how Dr. Hudson has done them in the past.”

“Mr. Warner, you have to give the class a chance,” Dr. Andruzzi said. She had taught the class for the last 10 years and she knew that students had passed down the class tenets for the past few years.

“Did you approve a supplementary text for the course?” he asked, ignoring her statement. “If so, did you approve a price tag of $200 for a memoir that tries to justify your professor’s failures in the business world?”

“Mr. Warner,” Dr. Andruzzi cut in.

“Dr. Andruzzi,” Phil said sharply. “Will you at least listen to my concerns without trying to placate me? If you have a valid reason for requiring students to spend $100 on a book that was available last month on his personal website for $10 – and another $75 because the format he uses is not something the average college student will have – then I will listen. But you are the dean of this department and one of your students is bringing a valid concern to your attention. I don’t want to have to go to the provost but I will if you are unwilling to address my concerns.”

Victoria Andruzzi knew Phil Warner. He had taken a class his first semester but she knew who he was even before then. She had known his father in college and his mother in her professional capacity for close to a decade.

“Very well, Mr. Warner,” the dean said, “I did approve a supplementary textbook for the class. I’ve used one for several semesters. It does not cost $100.”

“The one Dr. Hudson insists we buy costs $100 and is available only in a format used for graphic design, not text editing or display,” Phil stated firmly. “He is the author and the payment is to his personal account. I have a copy of it on my laptop. If you would prefer, here is the intranet address where you can find the document. I just purchased it. Given the fact that the college raised tuition 8 percent this year, I would think you’d find adding an additional $200 to a students’ budget unconscionable.

“I certainly do. I know you have to approve each syllabus. Did you approve a syllabus for this course?”

“Of course I did,” Dr. Andruzzi stated. “I compiled the syllabus for the course before I took this post.”

Phil set a copy of the syllabus in front of her. She looked at it for a moment and then at him. She arose gracefully and pulled open a file cabinet. She fished through the folders until she found the one she wanted and pulled it out. She extracted a copy of the syllabus and sat down again. She frowned as she looked over their two documents. Except for the most common words in the English language there was nothing similar.

“Could you leave this with me?” she asked.

“Of course,” Phil answered. “Dr. Andruzzi, I did a search on Dr. Hudson when he was named to replace you. I found his website and his professional associations. I know he worked here years ago before leaving to go into the private sector. His company went bankrupt three years ago and he taught introductory business courses in Pennsylvania for two years. He was a victim of cutbacks there and you hired him there. My biggest problem – aside from the focus of his course – is the fact that, in late July, you could purchase this ‘textbook’ for $10 from his website. Now you’ve given him a platform to force his students to increase the sales of something that would not be worth reading if it were free. That hardly seems ethical – even in the murky world of academia.”

Dr. Andruzzi frowned. This wasn’t the job she expected when had agreed to clean up the mess the former dean had left behind. She had opposed Alex Hudson’s hiring but he had strong support from the older members of the department who remembered him as an undergraduate and as an associate professor a decade earlier.

“I’m not sure it’s even his own work,” Phil added, noting the look on the dean’s face. “There are a lot of phrases that seemed familiar so I searched for them. They pop up in other works – with attribution. There is no attribution in the file from his website or in the supplementary textbook.”

Victoria Andruzzi closed her eyes tightly. Gordon Stevens had left Heilman’s once-august business program tottering. An academic scandal likely would topple it from its position among America’s best.

“Thank you for bringing this to my attention,” she said.

“I’m going to contact everyone and tell them not to purchase the book,” Phil said. “I will give them a copy of the file I downloaded in July. They can use any format to open it – and it’s not worth the $10 I paid for it.”

“I will pull the registration files and let them know to wait until Friday before purchasing it,” Dr. Andruzzi said with a nod. “I will read it over lunch and determine if it’s appropriate for the course. I will also review the revised syllabus. Will you give me until Friday morning to deal with this? The first of the semester is quite busy – schedule changes, tracking students who have withdrawn from school without notification, that sort of stuff. I wish I could devote my full attention to his. It deserves it but I simply don’t have the staff to deal with all the niggling details that also require attention.”

“I think that is appropriate,” Phil said. “I can sit in your outer office until three if you like. I have baseball practice but I can probably get you someone out there until four or five. Would that help?”

“We don’t have the budget for that,” Dr. Andruzzi admitted.

“It’s free labor,” Phil said with a chuckle.

“Free would be in the budget,” Dr. Andruzzi, “and it would help. It might keep students from simply knocking on my door with their problems.”

“I have class until noon so I’ll be here after lunch,” Phil said, standing. “I’ll check with Hailey to see if she can help out afterward. When do you get your student helper?”

“Friday,” the dean said. “Uh, Hailey ... I don’t want a problem with her. She caused a lot of trouble last year.”

“You won’t,” Phil said. “You seem to forget that Dr. Stevens was the professional and she was the neophyte. You also seem to forget that this is not the first time Dr. Stevens behaved that way. You’re very fortunate his behavior didn’t get the school a federal investigation.”

Victoria Andruzzi frowned again but nodded. She watched Phil leave and let out a deep breath. This was not the way she wanted her tenure as business school dean to begin.

Hailey and Katelyn found Phil waiting for them after their 10 o’clock class. Hailey hugged him tightly, despite his wet clothing.

“Are you OK?” she asked.

“I’m fine,” Phil answered. “I got a little more pissed off when I saw the piece of crap that idiot wants us to buy. So I went over his head. If Dr. Andruzzi doesn’t fix things, I’m going to accuse him of plagiarism in front of the provost. He can go quietly or he can go loudly but he will go.”

“Jesus!” Katelyn remarked.

“I sat around last year and watched the world go by,” Phil said, his eyes narrowed. “This year, if I see bullshit happening I’m going to take them down.”

Phil’s birthday party was the social event of the early season. His parents came down to visit after the first week of classes and joined a dozen people at the last big bash the pool would host for several months.

The baseball team opened its season on Saturday afternoon with a win over last season’s conference champion – and more than 200 people turned out to watch the game. It was standing-room only down the fences that lined the field. Phil didn’t pitch the opener. Simon Perez, the best returning pitcher from a year earlier, got the nod and hurled five strong innings. Phil came on in relief in the sixth and notched two perfect frames to earn the save.

The game transitioned into a party to celebrate Phil’s birthday. Bob, Ted, Stacy and Emma joined three freshmen whose parents worked at Barton. Tiffany’s dad and Molly’s cousins also showed up.

It was a dry party but no one seemed to care because the temperature was still in the mid-80s that day and the pool was a bigger hit than beer or liquor would have been.

Life returned to normal soon after.

The pregnancy rumors didn’t grow traction, which caused Courtney no end of consternation. Those who didn’t laugh outright dismissed her by remarking that if Hailey was pregnant the baby belonged to Phil Warner and he would take care of it.

She tried to alter the rumor to suggest it wasn’t Phil’s child. By the end of September, it became obvious that all the rumors did was create giggles so she decided to just let things die. Hailey Warren had developed a network of acquaintances that had become friends as the year ended.

She shifted her attention to the lesser-known members of the group. Molly Kelly was a virtual unknown. All she managed to learn was that Molly wasn’t from the United States but was in the country on a student visa. There was no help there.

Katelyn Gorman was another dead end. Her mother was a police officer in good standing. There was a brother who was a little creepy but nothing to suggest he was in a gang or other kinds of trouble.

Then she found Tiffany Grayling and thought she’d hit the jackpot. She began to tell everyone about the demise of Grayling Manufacturing and the arrests of her family. People just shrugged it off. It had been big news on campus five months earlier but now everyone who gave a shit already knew.

Courtney grew more frustrated when Dr. Alex Hudson abruptly resigned after the first week of classes. Try as she might, Courtney couldn’t find out any information about why he left. The only news she found was a press release announcing the new professor had resigned for personal reasons. Dr. Andruzzi returned to teaching two sessions of contemporary management principles. Hudson’s other course was a basic night class so it was passed to a teaching assistant.

Courtney decided more direct measures were needed. The “disinformation” campaign had proved fruitless. Phil Warner and his friends were skating along, more popular than ever.

The fall baseball schedule had started to draw a crowd – partly because the team was decent but also because several sexy girls came out to every game. Courtney had even watched a game or two – she had been a regular at Dodgers games in Los Angeles. It wasn’t the same.

Courtney still had her small group of hangers-on but it hadn’t grown since the first week on campus. Most people just ignored her – and that completely pissed her off. Dr. Hudson’s dismissal and the reaction to her rumors had shown Courtney that Phil and Hailey were untouchable.

She didn’t dare go after Katelyn directly. The girl looked like a stuntwoman and could probably kick her ass. Even if she didn’t, her mom was a cop and Courtney had seen enough cops from her fiasco in Calder City. She was still on probation from the drugs in her purse and couldn’t risk tangling with the daughter of a police captain.

That left Tiffany and Molly to feel her increasing ire.

It was four days before Halloween when Emma Thomas called Phil’s cell phone. She was frantic and told him that she’d just received a link to a website that hosted naked pictures of Molly Kelly and Tiffany Grayling. She gave Phil the link and he immediately checked the site. His first thought was that someone had hacked his phone and stolen the pictures they’d sent to him. Instead he saw a bunch of faked photos: Tiffany with a midget; Molly surrounded by six black guys. It was obvious that the photos weren’t real but they were still enough to piss him off.

By the end of the hour, he knew that everyone on campus had received the link through their school account. Phil had heard the rumors and people had told him about Courtney Hollings making inquiries about Tiffany, Molly and Katelyn. This was obviously an escalation in their little war.

He decided to make certain it was her final offensive. He had done his best to leave her alone, to let her find her way on campus. Now she’d gone too far.

Phil nodded and opened his laptop. He had made plans in case Courtney didn’t stop at spreading rumors. Now he would ruin her.

Just a few months earlier, the state assembly had passed a law to fight cyber-bullying. It extended to posting fake photographs on the Internet. The attorney general was aching to find someone to prosecute and Phil decided he would hand the guy Courtney Hollings on a silver platter. If he wanted any campaign money from the Warner family, he would follow through and nail her ass to the wall. Phil didn’t care about jail time but he wanted to make sure that she left with a felony conviction.

Three days later, the next to last day of October, he waited outside Courtney’s dorm. A single phone call had gotten the site shut down only two hours after it had opened. It didn’t take Ron Farragut long to trace the IP address back to a dorm room on the Heilman campus and it took the state police about 10 minutes of questioning to force the computer geek to give up Courtney Hollings. She had given him a blowjob for his help – and $2,000.

That secured a search warrant, which would be executed as soon as Courtney left her dorm room. Phil stepped in front of her to block her path and a state police officer showed her the search warrant before taking her backpack and her laptop. Two other officers went into the dorm to search her room.

“What the fuck!” Courtney seethed.

“May I, Officer?” Phil asked. The cop shrugged and gestured for Phil to go ahead.

“It’s like this, Courtney,” Phil said. “In about 20 minutes, you’re going to be arrested and charged with cyber-bullying. That’s a third-degree felony – and it will violate your probation. You’ll go to jail for drug possession.”