Chapter 27: Meeting the Dean. CPS. The Lawyer’s Daughter

The following Thursday I got asked to come to Dean Winslow Phillips’ office for a one p.m. meeting. I was there five minutes early, feeling about as nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs. I did have one card up my sleeve that might help or hurt my case; only time would tell.

Dean Phillips secretary escorted me into his conference room and got me a diet coke. He came in a minute later.

“Professor Clark, I’m sorry to meet under potentially adversarial conditions today. Do you know why you’re here?”

“No, Sir. I don’t.” That was the truth. I didn’t know what articles of impeachment they were considering or what the charges were or whatever. I needed to hear that. I was surprised that I hadn’t received a written summons of some kind.

The Dean sighed. “There has been the suggestion that you are having an affair with one of your students – two of them actually, and that you have given favoritism based on sex to their grades as a result.”

He looked at me expecting me to say something, so I said, “Is that all?”

“That’ll do. Do you have any comments? This meeting is for me to determine whether to refer this serious matter forward to the faculty disciplinary committee.”

“I do have comments, but first I would like to show you a short video. I believe it is important to what you are considering.” I stood and walked to the DVD player and TV set in the Dean’s conference room. All the administrative rooms had something like this AV setup. I started the video I’d set up before our meeting as soon as the equipment was ready.

The video was an extract of a longer video that had been taken the previous Saturday by our videographers. This one started with the girls arriving and walking to the center of the circle of guests. There was laughter and applause from the guests, and many smiling faces. The commitment ceremony was then shown up to the point where we went to our parents to greet and hug them. After that I turned the video off.

I commented, “Two of the women in that commitment ceremony are students I advised and mentored, and they have been in several of my special projects classes, principally based on a work-study program with Robotix in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, that I helped set up. Because plural marriages are not allowed, we did a commitment ceremony. I am legally married to one of the women in the ceremony, but it is immaterial as to which one because I love them all equally and dearly. As you could see their parents were deeply involved in having their offspring participate in the commitment ceremony.

“So, if I am accused of having an ‘affair’ I plead not guilty. An affair is an illicit series of secret encounters, and each of our relationships was never conducted in that spirit. As you can see by the many friends and family at our service we have been open about our relationships, have the blessings of everyone’s parents as you plainly can see in the video, and continue to have a rich and full life together as an intentional family of equals. I have been especially sensitive to never take advantage of my position or to harm any of my partners in any way.

“You might know the unusual backgrounds of Ashley Caldwell and Christine Czerny, both of whom are now grad students here at the university. They are brilliant despite their age. They are now working here at the university on their masters and Ph.D. level courses on full scholarships. They are both seventeen. They have applied for several patents on their independent work on several specific algorithms that address machine learning from different types of reasoning approaches, are co-authoring a textbook with me, have presented multiple learned papers including at one prestigious international conference, and have taught parts of several courses at the university including one I put together with them.

“Now, to the favoritism in grading accusation; as my affection for the two teens grew I looked for ways to extract myself from the grading process for the two of them. I actually discussed this with Provost Summer at one point, and she told me that she liked the solution I’d come up with.

“That solution was to have the women’s entire grade rendered by Ray Jennings, the CEO of Robotix. The girls were working on Robotix project teams on various practical applications of artificial intelligence. In most cases, they ended up leading the teams because of their advanced knowledge on the subject. Ray consistently gave them straight A’s as well as extensive written laudatory comments. I intervened in no way to either influence his grades or to modify the grades once they were given. His letters are in the student files, but I can provide you copies of the emails and letters between us on the grades, and you may verify that with Ray Jennings. Either I or Deb Summer can provide you his contact information.”

The Dean scowled and went into deep thinking. I resolved to keep quiet at that point.

He finally asked, “Have you had sex with either of the teens?”

I looked shocked, “Dean Phillips, that is a highly inappropriate question that doesn’t deserve an answer. You should be ashamed of yourself prying into the private domestic life of one of your faculty members. I have never, nor do I intend to start now, talked about any aspect of my relationship with any woman at any time in my life regardless of the kind of relationship I might have with her. I am not one that boasts of my conquests in the men’s locker room or over a beer in some bar, as your question invites. My private life is just that – private! If that means I am dismissed from this university because I refuse to answer a rude and impolitic question, then so be it. The question is beneath the boundary of ethical business behavior in my opinion.”

The Dean looked chagrined at my dressing down regarding his question. He huffed and puffed a little, and then asked, “What further coursework will you have with Ashley or Christine?”

“I have been their academic advisor and mentor because of their unique nature in terms of age and capabilities. I have been planning to retain those roles, although I can certainly see the problems it raises regarding grading. On grading, I can easily shift that to another colleague. I will be the girls’ dissertation advisor, but the rest of their doctoral committee will be the ones to vote yea or nay. Long ago I had planned to abstain my vote were I to even have one.

“Both girls chose me because of my own work in the field of artificial intelligence, and this is where they plan to do their dissertations. So, I guess in some way, if they continue at the university that I will have to be involved with them until they complete their academic work. Provost Summer is well aware of the fine line I am walking here and we talk frequently to be sure that things remain unbiased and appropriate. She has also sanctioned the way we have interacted outside of the university.

Just then the door to the conference room opened and a woman I didn’t know came into the room and walked over to the Dean. She briefly whispered a couple of comments to Phillips that I couldn’t hear and then left.

When I again had his attention I said, “The university would be remiss if it didn’t consider hiring the teens to teach in the computer science department. As I mentioned, I have them teaching various parts of my Introduction to AI class, and they are outstanding teachers, fair graders, and accomplished in their work. The other students respond to them amazingly well, I think in part due to their age and mastery of the material.”

Dean Phillips leaned back his chair, this time in even deeper thought with his brow furrowed. I thought I might have given him more to think about than he expected. He pointed at the TV and said, “Would you please play that video again. There’s something I’d like to see again.”

I restarted the video, and the DVD played all the way through.

Dean Phillips observed, “I see quite a few people from the university at your ceremony, from both the faculty and the administrative side. I can see you have a wide circle of friends here. I know Professor Drew Stiles too; he is not one to involve himself in frivolous activities.”

I spoke with a hard edge, “We didn’t think of our commitment ceremony as frivolous in any way, Sir. We meant our vows to have meaning and punch, and to be something we can reflect back on for the rest of our lives. Our commitments are very real and very important to the four of us, Sir.”

Dean Phillips said softly, “I could tell. I am impressed by them. I assume you wrote them.”

“My partners and I wrote them. They are my equals in every way.”

“Oh, I didn’t mean to imply otherwise,” he said apologetically.

After a few moments silence he said, “I am not referring this matter to the disciplinary committee. There is nothing there for them as far as the university is concerned. I would, however, like copies of those emails and correspondence you mentioned with Mr. Jennings at Robotix where he graded the young women. I think that will be all it takes to settle this matter.”

The Dean stood, abruptly shook my hand, and exited the conference room. I collected my DVD, turned off the AV equipment, and headed back to my office. I did call Deb and had to leave a message for her to call me at home that evening. I commented I’d had a meeting with Dean Phillips that seemed to have a positive outcome.

I also had a long email from the girls who were in class when I got back to my office. A woman had pulled them each from class individually and had a brief interview with them about living with me, whether I had put any pressure on them to do anything they didn’t want to do, and so on. They explained that they had given me high ratings for professionalism and support, and stressed the family atmosphere they enjoyed with the professor’s girlfriend and legal wife Marcia. I knew I’d get a more complete brief from them later on the way home.

Despite what I thought was a good outcome of the meeting I was still unsettled. Someone or maybe a couple of people had their nose out of joint about my relationship with the teens, and that meant that lacking satisfaction by having the university admonish me in some way, they might go further and contact the police to try to make more of a case about things.

I wondered whether I should engage a lawyer and go through a little of the preliminary work before something happened instead of waiting for a knock on my door. I decided that was a good idea, but I had no particular attorney to talk with other than the small firm in Dillon that had handled my estate planning for the girls.

I called Gabe Slocum. He answered on the first ring. I explained that I needed to engage a lawyer in what might become a criminal complaint. He asked for some details, so I told him briefly what the situation was in three minutes. He told me to come and see him the next day; we settled on a one p.m. appointment.

Talking to Gabe had made me feel incrementally better. I felt that he might be the right guy after all, since he’d commented about having handled several other related domestic situations. I liked Gabe and hoped that through our contact we might even strike up a friendship.

I told my ‘wives’ about my day, and let them grill me about what I thought about things and why I’d gone further to start proceeding with Gabe Slocum. They all wanted to help in some way. We talked about what we might do to turn any criminal complaint aside, but there wasn’t much until we knew the nature of a specific complaint, if there even was one.

I did say that if the police questioned any of us that I recommended that we only respond in the presence of our lawyer other than our name, address, and minor facts about us. I explained how I’d turned away Dean Phillips question about whether I was having sex with Ash and-or Chris. We would not be required to respond to the police asking that question, but we would if the question was asked in front of a judge. Our lawyer would be our guide in this situation. The idea was to not let questioning get to that point.

We did decide that we needed to fire up the girls’ guest room façade again. We’d let that slide, and we wanted the guest room to look lived in and heavily used, especially if Child Protective Services showed up to inspect the premises. The girls went off to attend to that detail. We also moved the second mattress that had been in the master bedroom into one of the guest rooms, where it looked as though it was in a storage room since we stood it on end.

After I taught my morning classes and wolfed down lunch, I met with Gabe Slocum in his office in downtown Dillon. Gabe stopped me as I started to spout off about my relationship with the girls and said this was going in a direction he thought it would, and that he wanted one of his staff to join us. A moment later, he introduced me to Jill Slocum, a pretty and very young looking lawyer. She sat opposite me and gave me a couple of her business cards. Jill looked about the age of the teens, if not younger.

Gabe explained, “Jill is our expert on family law and as you might guess from her appearance a disarming litigator. She is my daughter. The judges and court system all love her. She’s nineteen and a full-fledged lawyer with two years of experience working here. I think the two of us will end up handling this case if it amounts to anything. I told her about our earlier phone call.”

We spent about ninety minutes together. After giving the two of them a five-minute synopsis of my relationship with Ash and Chris, they had me go back to the very beginning and tell them in detail. As we went along they peppered me with questions.

I started by giving them copies of the initial emails from Deb announcing that she wanted me to mentor and advise two unique students. I talked about my initial work with the girls, their courses and grades, testing out of one course after another, and then inviting them to my Halloween party at the house along with a hundred others. I described about waking up the next morning with the two of them on top of the covers on either side of me. I also told them what I learned about their home life. I mentioned being invited to dinner at the Czernys and that Lisa Caldwell was there and flirting with me like mad. I talked about the teens’ Christmas present to me of their photograph.

I admitted to my growing feelings of affection for the two teens, even telling about how I repressed any sexual feelings I had for them. Jill asked about why I did that and what I was thinking more broadly. I told of my great respect for the two teens and what they were accomplishing with their advanced intellects and learning abilities. The truth had been that I was as turned on by those aspects of the two than I was any physical characteristics.

I went into detail about how we started working at Robotix, and how I’d checked out my idea with Deb Summer, the provost and dean of admissions, to make sure I wasn’t stepping over some line. I told how Deb was also an advocate for the teens and how she became closer to the family over time.

I described the birthday gifts I’d gotten for each girl at the end of February and March of that year. Jill asked right away, “How much did you spend on them?”

I shrugged, “I think it was about six hundred dollars. The backpacks were about a hundred each and the necklaces two hundred each.”

Gabe’s eyebrows rose, “That’s serious gift money. I take it that by that time you were having love feelings for the two?”

“Yes, definitely,” I stated.

I then described our work at Robotix skipping over the technical details. I told about events leading up to the March blizzard that blanketed New England with over three feet of snow and locked us together for five days, and I reluctantly told about the two of them coming to my bed and how we made love. Our mutual feelings and emotions about each other were revealed and we then plotted about how we could live together at least some of the time. I told about Chris’ idea to avoid the long commute by them living part time with me, especially on the nights before or after a day at Robotix.

Jill hopped up and returned with a road atlas. “Show me exactly where they lived at the time.” I put small dots on the streets where Ash and Chris lived at that time, as well as where I lived, the university, Robotix, and where all the train stations were. I could tell Jill would come back to those pages later for a more careful analysis.

I talked about how we sought permission from Lisa Caldwell and the Czernys for the girls to live part time with me, and the concerns I had about how things looked to outsiders. I told about my worries about my career should any part of the physical arrangements be discovered. I talked about how we made some changes to the house to perpetrate the look of the teens just staying in their own room, and then how several people had seen through our guise.

I told about our first summer together working at Robotix, and how we bonded even further. We were no longer ‘playing house,’ we were living together as a threesome.

Jill asked, “And I assume the physical side of your relationship persisted?”

I laughed, “Oh, that is an understatement. It thrived. We discovered that we each have exceptionally active libidos and consequently we held little back in our affections and play.”

Jill smiled and nodded. She asked, “Point of reference, was your relationship a vee or triangle?”

“Vee?”

“Errr, did the teens interact with each other?”

“Oh! Yes, they did. They hadn’t before we started. They were best friends as I told you, but they became lovers as well when we started to get intimate, and I did not urge them to make that happen. The two of them liked to tease me by doing things together – enticing things to get my motor running.”

Jill nodded again and indicated I should continue the story.

I told about how Marcia had entered the picture, and how her relationship with the three of us matured to the point where the four of us started to engage in sex together. I described her bisexuality, and then our discovery that Deb Summer was her paramour.

I described the three month terror run that Lisa had gone on to escape being shot by some thug, her homecoming as a new person, and then how we became involved sexually with her along with Deb and Doug.

I caught a nearly secret glance between Gabe and Jill as I mentioned the group sex sessions. I wondered whether I’d find out what that was about later.

I mentioned the ICAI conference in Miami that Ash and Chris presented major papers at, and then the progress on the book we were writing. I talked about our Halloween party and the after-party, and then how I’d caught the teens having a little fuck session with a couple of college guys they liked, and how that evening had turned into an every greater orgy when Marcia and I had gotten caught spying on them. I mentioned how that seemed to lead to further swinging and a couple of sex parties that we all enjoyed. I even mentioned the women occasionally toying with the pizza delivery boys.