January 27, 2007--The Passive Voice--Part Five

In Part Four, covering less than two months, Lloyd Zazlo, the newly appointed assistant director of the Collegiate Opportunity Program, interviewed and hired six “anchor” faculty members. First was a husband and wife team—the Haskins, Sam, for math, and the bodacious Carolyn for American History. Then, Juan Loperena, to teach French and Spanish. After graduating from City College, Juan spent five years upstate in Attica Prison, after killing a fellow Crip gang member who raped his kid sister. Zazlo thought that since it was a crime of honor and Juan was self-described as totally “rehabilitated,” he would make a good role model for COP students, many of whom the program’s director, Joe Murphy, a former cop, said would also be ex cons. Then for art history he hired a successful working artist, Benny Anderson, who grew up dirt poor in hardscrabble rural Georgia, one of ten children, the son of a sharecropper. Joining them was Margaret Williams, a Queens native and poet in what she called “the Maya Angelou mode,” who Lloyd penciled-in to anchor the Composition and Literature staff. And finally there was Dr. Roberto Santos, for sociology, out of Luling in south-central Texas, Yale and Harvard trained, on a fast-track to a stellar academic career, but wanting to cash all that in to teach in Queens as a way to find out if his credentials, resume, and trust fund (oil was discovered on the family’s 1,000 acres) was “all there is.” So it was time for another faculty meeting—very different, of course from the one described in Parts Two and Three.

Thus, in Part Five, Zazlo . . .

Zazlo thought it appropriate, and even a little ironic, that the only room that was available and large enough to accommodate the Collegiate Opportunity Program’s first faculty meeting was the very same one where he had endured his last English Department conclave.

When everyone had assembled, Joe Murphy pushed back his chair with a scrape, got up, and cleared his throat to command everyone’s attention. Zazlo noticed that he was wearing his best suit. And in his most educated-sounding voice Joe said, “I’m Murphy. Joe Murphy, your director. Welcome to Queens College and to the COP Program.” He coughed out a laugh at the acronym. “Did Zazlo tell you that I was a cop in my former life?” No one responded. “Well, I guess he didn’t. But that’s what I was, a cop. And then later a detective. So you see I’m not much of a scholar, but that’s OK since that’s what we hired you for.” He looked around at his new staff, seeking some response. They continued to either look blankly back at him or at the linoleum tiled floor. Zazlo thought they might be feeling a little nervous about embarking on the new enterprise. He certainly was. “But I bet Zazlo told you that I did some work for Bobby Kennedy. Senator Kennedy, God rest his soul. We’re both Irish.” Still no reaction. “So he didn’t tell you that either, huh? Well, we’ll all get to know each other before too long. Maybe over drinks.”

Margaret Williams raised her hand and asked in a voice full of timbre, “Do you think, Mr. Murphy, that we might make a circle?”

“A what? And by the way, I’m Joe. Just Joe. And who are you?”

“I’m Mrs. Williams, Margaret Williams. I meant a circle of chairs, Mr. Murphy. For what we are here to do that seems appropriate.”

“Sure, sure, Marge. Great idea. Should have thought of it myself. Go right ahead. By all means.”

Juan Loperena raised his had after the circle had been formed. Joe nodded to recognize him. “Do you think it might be a good idea if we introduced ourselves? Maybe even say a word or two about our backgrounds and why we’re here?”

“Sure, sure,” Joe said. “But I thought you’re all here because you needed the job. Heh, heh, heh.” No one even smiled. “Well, I sort of began. So maybe it’s the rest of your turns. So why don’t you start,” he was looking at Juan, “And then when you’re all done, I want to tell you a little more what we’re faced with here. OK?”

And then in turn, with Juan Loperena leading off, each of the core faculty members said a few words about themselves. Juan set the tone by carefully not mentioning why Lloyd was thinking about him as a role model—keeping it bland he simply recited the bare bones of his resume: born in PR, grew up uptown, went to City College, taught in a dropout-prevention program, that sort of thing; Sam Haskins spoke briefly about his work in the Delta with the Algebra Project and how important it was, and is, to find ways to make abstract subjects such as math accessible to students who had been “stereotyped” and for whom there were “low expectations” and thus the entire experience is “stigmatizing”—he used all of those words; then Roberto Santos, in a surprisingly confessional mode, told about growing up “wealthy and privileged,” yet still looked upon, in spite of his “success,” as still a “person of color” (Lloyd saw that he was in fact nut brown) and that he “resonated’ to what Sam had said about how that makes one feel and how painful it was to be stigmatized—“don’t be fooled by all of this,” he said, pointing to his jacket and tie, “in the eyes of the world, I’m still a Spic” (Zazlo noticed that one of Joe Murphy’s legs began to vibrate involuntarily); Carolyn Haskins did not mention that she was Sam’s wife but did talk extensively about her research—about the process of discovering slave narratives and how important it was for people of color (this was a phrase new to Zazlo who made a mental note to use it liberally when future situations warranted) to “encounter the truth of their pasts in order to free themselves from being complicitous in their own subjugation”—she then connected this to her own aspirations as an instructor: “I plan to have my students write their personal family histories, to uncover that truth, as part my teaching” (both of Joe’s legs were now vibrating and it looked as if they would propel him out of his chair); next to last was Margaret Williams—she spoke about how poetry had been “liberating” for her, how it “opened spaces” in her mind into which she “trepidatiously” entered and how, once there, she was then able finally to move about freely in the world: “even though for me that world has always been just right here in Queens”; and finally it was Benny Anderson’s turn: picking up on the testimonial tone that had been set he told about his first experience at the Art Institute—“When I saw that Seurat at the top of the stairs, you know, the Grand Jette, a whole new world of possibilities opened up and I realized I was not any longer going to be that barefoot Georgia boy; I was to become of the city, of the world; and that’s what I’m going to be doing here with the rest of you”-- in turn he let his artist’s eye rest for long moments on each of his new colleagues as if to formalize the bond that was, between them, in the process of being forged.

“Well that’s enough of that,” Joe Murphy said with perhaps more force than he intended. So to acknowledge that he quickly added, “I mean, of course, what all of you said is fine with me. That’s why we signed you up. Right Zazlo?” Lloyd didn’t meet Joe’s eye, thinking a simple nod would suffice.

“But what about you, Lloyd? You haven’t said much. What’s happenin’ here for you?” This from Sam.

Lloyd looked over at Joe to see if it was all right for him to say something. He thought he had to. He even felt he wanted to. Joe, though, didn’t respond nor did he take up where he had broken off. He remained standing next to Sam, silently but restlessly at the head of the circle. So Zazlo attempted to say something appropriate, “Well, I, I, I mean, I think this is a very good opportunity here. For all of us. I mean, of course, for the students.” He wondered if that was enough. But considering the intensity of what everyone else had shared, and realizing more might be expected of the assistant director, he pushed himself to add, “You may not know it, but I too grew up lower-middle-class,” a couple of his new colleagues chuckled at that euphemism, “It wasn’t easy for me either. I mean, it wasn’t anything like what Benny experienced. I acknowledged that. Or probably what any of the rest of you had to deal with—even Roberto, I mean Robert. I’m Jewish and knew a lot of people who were killed just because of who they were. And I knew survivors too who lived in my neighborhood.” Was that enough he wondered? Thinking not, he said, with what he thought was sufficient sincerity, “I suppose I’m a survivor too.” He looked around the room, “Is that OK? Is it enough?” No one was looking across at him, but they all nodded.

“We’re getting’ a little short on time here,” Joe said, looking up at the clock on the wall, “So let me begin to bring this to a closure.” He paced around the outside of their circle. “What you all said was pretty impressive and moving. I think Zazlo did a damn good job rounding up you guys. I’m proud of what he accomplished. And I hope to be proud of all of you. I’m sure you know that we are not here at the invitation of the faculty. If you want to know the truth, they’re all a bunch of . . . . Better I don’t say since we’re in mixed company.” He chuckled at his own joke. “But suffice it to say that it will not be a friendly environment here. But, and here’s the point,” he leaned in toward them, “What I mean is that if you do your job right these kids will succeed and prove to the rest of them,” he pointed out the window as if at the college itself, “to those, forgive me, scumbags,” he spat that, “because, sorry, that’s what they are, in that way you’ll be showing those bastards that there’s some pretty smart folks among your people.” He paused to allow what he said to sink in--Zazlo noticed perhaps not as well as Joe might have hoped.

“One more thing—you talked about being stereotyped and stigmatized, things of that kind. Well I know about that too. From first hand. When I came up, a hundred years ago it feels like,” he snorted, “I got that treatment too. I wasn’t to-the-manor-born, if you get my drift, my people also came over here on boats. Not chained up, that I’ll admit, but in steerage, with not a pot to pee in. You’re your people, I know about that, many of them didn’t make it and more back home were dying like flies. From starvation. You know about that? But I was one of the lucky ones—we made it here to this wonderful Land of Opportunity,” his sarcasm did have its effect, “to the wonderful U. S of A. where my father croaked one afternoon while shoveling coal fourteen hours a day, six days a week; and my mother took in laundry from the rich folks so we could have shoes that fit.”

Joe now stood behind Sam Haskins, in his shadow, with his meaty hands gripping the back of the chair. Shifting from one foot to the other, almost inaudibly, under his breath he said, “Once a Mick always a Mick.”

“But enough of that too,” Joe quickly recovered from what he ha been feeling and, sounding more his jaunty Irish-cop self, said, “We’ve got work to do. Class dismissed. Can I buy anyone a drink?”

* * *

Before anyone knew it, it was the middle of the spring semester.

The core faculty Zazlo hired had found others to join them so a full faculty contingent had been assembled. Zazlo came up with what he thought was an efficient interlocking schedule of courses that assured the maximum use of the few classrooms the college had allocated to accommodate the 200 students Joe Murphy had recruited. He had tapped into all of his old political and police and parole department sources and came up with busloads of, as promised, ex cons and gangbangers—mainly Crips but a smattering of Bloods as well, saying, “We got to figure out how to get them to stop knocking each other off. I’m bettin’ on a good education to do the trick.”

Zazlo had his doubts as he observed them eyeing each other hostilely from separate tables in the student dining commons—the Hispanic Crips with their signature blue “tags” while the Bloods, mainly blacks, made sure to wear something red to mark their identity and territory. But otherwise, for the first time in quite a while, Zazlo felt good about himself. He was getting such universal praise for the ingenuity of his master schedule of courses and the students seemed so uniformly pleased with the faculty he had hired that he began to feel he had discovered a new professional path for himself—university administrator. He thought that if he could make a success of this, he might be able to free himself from the pressure to complete his foundering dissertation—William Blake and the Four Zoas could wait—and an academic life of either publishing or perishing. All he needed to do, he thought, was keep the faculty happy by getting the audio-visual equipment to their classrooms when requested, making sure their photocopying was done on time and delivered to their offices, and continuing to be sure to produce each term as good a schedule of courses as he had for the COP Program’s initial year. All the signals suggested that he was on a promising trajectory. It appeared that he had at last found his calling.

Zazlo also knew that the ultimate success of the program and his own destiny were inextricably linked, and that both would depend on how the students fared in the classroom. And so on occasion he would sit in on classes to see for himself. But he was equally eager to hear from the faculty anecdotes and stories about what their students were accomplishing.

True to her word, Carolyn Haskins had her students research and write about the histories of their families. She reported that this was going very well. In asking students to search for the often hidden past, as she put it, to “exhume truths essential to self-awareness and empowerment” was an “essential prelude to their awakening.” She told Lloyd that often students’ parents and grandparents resisted telling these stories as if they were something about which to be ashamed; but as her students pressed them, many began for the first time to talk “authentically” about the past in ways that proved to be liberating for them as well as for their children. One student, Sara Brown, had even managed to convince her grandmother to show her the diary that was kept by her own great grandmother who had been a house slave on the Comer Plantation in Barbour County, Alabama. A diary so vividly tragic that Carolyn felt certain her publisher would include it in her soon-to-be-published series of slave narratives.

Over lunch one day, Margaret Williams excitedly told Zazlo about Herb Kemp, a student in her Comp and Lit class who had spent ten years in Sing Sing for armed robbery. And how, while there, he began to stutter so severely that it rendered him virtually incomprehendible. It was an understandable and effective way, she speculated, for someone as sensitive as him to seal himself off from the horrors of prison life. But nurtured by her, he began to write short plays about his early life in central Brooklyn, plays so potent in their emotional charge that Margaret had gotten him to agree to allow one of them to be presented at the library where she ran her Friday evening poetry workshop. On the evening on which it was scheduled the lead actor showed up with laryngitis so severe that Herb, who was seated in the back, came forward, literally walking into his own play. And spoke all the lines without a stammer. He didn’t come to class all the next week and Margaret was fearful that something terrible had happened over the weekend—perhaps something that was a consequence of his performance. But when he did return, she noticed that his stuttering was less pronounced and she was feeling hopeful that perhaps with time he would “recover his full voice.”

And then Roberto Santos was pleased to report to Zazlo that his sociology classes were also going well. He was particularly impressed by the way in which students were so “naturally able” to connect the theoretical work to their own lives. A group of his students, for example, who had gone to the same middle school, were working together on a project about how teachers’ expectations for their students effected how well they performed. It was called by scholars The Pygmalion Effect, where high- or, more typically in the kinds of schools they attended, low-expectations get sadly fulfilled. Santos said that the work they were producing was at least comparable to best of his Harvard students’ field research. In fact, perhaps it was even better because of the “lived-intensity” his Queens students brought to the subject.

But then there was Sam Haskins’ report about an incident he witnessed after class one afternoon on the Number 7 subway line as he was heading back to the city. He was standing at the far end of the car, hanging onto the strap when a ruckus broke out at the other end. To him it looked like the beginning of a rumble between some COP Program Crips, who he recognized, and a few Bloods who had crossed between cars while the train was in motion. They too were carrying Queens College notebooks and thus he assumed that they also were COP students. At first there was some taunting and then some pushing and shoving before one of the Latino Crip’s kids pulled a knife and with it began slashing the air. Sam was tempted to intercede, thinking his being a faculty member might help calm the situation; but when he saw more knives flashing he thought better of it. Luckily, he told a dumb-struck Zazlo, the train rumbled into the Junction Boulevard station and all of the students tumbled off, some rolling on the ground entangled in each other’s arms. Sam was relieved to see two policemen racing down the platform and, as the doors closed, he saw them already beginning to pull the students apart. The next day there was a brief story about it in the Daily News, but no one was arrested and neither the college nor the Cop Program was mentioned. As Sam put it with a weak smile, “I guess we got lucky.”

All in all, though, things were going so well that the director and his assistant were able to slip away for long lunches together at the Shamrock, washing down the daily Blue Plate Specials with long draughts of Guinness. Lloyd couldn’t get enough of Joe’s stories about his days on the beat when he and his partner busted Colombian smuggling gangs out at JFK Airport, and about the things they “confiscated,” and all the Kennedy gossip Joe was more and more willing to share as the lunches lengthened into the afternoon and the alcohol took full effect. Lloyd, whose social and off-campus life had dissolved to more-or-less nothing, couldn’t get enough vicarious details about how “the Kennedy boys worked their way through every Broadway cast.”

But then things began to get more complicated. Zazlo rudely came to understand that being a university administrator during the tumultuous 70s required much more savvy and political skill than he was acquiring either over drinks with Joe or when fighting around with the staff in Reprographics.

The first campus to explode was up at City College. A coalition of Black and Latino students, encouraged, some said manipulated, by “radical” faculty seized control of the student center and issued a long list of “non-negotiable demands.” These included a call for the hiring of more minority faculty; the appointment of more minority administrators; more open admission policies to enable more “children of the oppressed classes” to enroll; stipends to make college affordable; the elimination of the R.O.T.C. program; no “pigs” were to be allowed on campus to strong-arm “striking” students to end their “occupation”; a guarantee had to be provided to assure that all students would not be prosecuted; and striking students were to be given passing grades in all the courses they were taking but could not attend due to the fact that they were “seeking justice” while walled up behind barricades.

All the local media raced to the scene and student and faculty spokespersons quickly emerged, becoming overnight celebrities as their images flickered on TV screens every night as the demonstrations stretched on. These leaders, realizing they had the public’s attention and the administration of City College, realizing they were in an impossible situation—they did not want to appear to be unsympathetic to the demands of minorities, considering who lived in the communities surrounding the college, nor did they wish to stumble into a public relations disaster of the kind that toppled their colleague administrators not long ago just south of them at Columbia—these conflicting impulses assured that this confrontation between the powerless and their oppressor would develop into a struggle of epic proportions, or at least turn into a conflated local conflict that produced good TV footage. There was nothing very dramatic going on at the time in the sports or weather news so the heated rhetoric and the periodic rumors that the students had “torched” the student center pushed everything else off the air.

And so inevitably, fueled by the blaring headlines and the palpitating TV reports, the conflict spread from City University campus to campus, until at last it crossed the East River and, as if it had to crawl along the traffic-clogged Long Island Expressway, finally reached the hitherto sequestered campus of sleepy Queens College.

Joe and Lloyd were on their third pint when the call from the dean’s office reached them in the Shamrock. Sean, the bartender called Joe over to the phone; and even from where he remained sitting, at their distant regular corner table, through the smoke and murmuring of the other denizens, Zazlo could hear the panic-stricken voice of Dean Hartley, the widely-published authority on 18th century French history, Lloyd could overheard Hartley scream—“Get your fucking ass over here Murphy. Now! Those bastards have seized my office. I have a small Corot behind my desk and if they touch it, I’ll fire you so fast that you’ll be back in that squad car by next week. I don’t care who your patron is.”

“Promise me, Dan,” Zazlo heard Joe say calmly to the Dean of the College, “Promise me that you won’t call the police. Let me get there before doing anything. I know how to handle them. I made a career out of that.” He shook his head two or three times while listening to his dean—Zazlo could not hear what was being said. “I told you I’d take care of things OK. And yes you can set yourself up in my office. I’ll bunk with Zazlo.” He winked toward Lloyd who was quickly realizing that the ground on which his new administrative career was being built was shifting.

Joe held the phone away from his ear so that Lloyd could now hear the dean say, “I’ll hold off but promise me you’ll get them to keep their filthy hands off my Corot.”

Joe said, sounding annoyed, “Yeah, yeah, that too.”

He hung up and turned to Zazlo and from across the bar said to him, “Let’s get the hell over there. He’s about to bust a gut.” And as they pushed through the door, with a shrug, Joe said, “All he keeps talking about are his carrots. Whatever the hell that is. To tell you the truth, I think he’s crackin’ up.”

As they raced toward the car, with his hand at the side of his head Joe made a circling motion, “I think he’s turned himself into a nut case.”

Zazlo thought, my parents were right—I should after all have gone to medical school.

* * *

Back at the campus everyone who wanted to enter had to show IDs to the police who had cordoned off all the gates. When they saw Joe, though, their former colleague, they simply waved him and Zazlo through, rolling their eyes up in the air as if to say, “Can you believe this crap?” Joe muttered to himself, “I thought that fruit dean told me he’d hold off on the cops. He’s only making things worse.”

He swerved toward his parking space in the staff lot, turned off the engine, and sat for a moment, rhythmically beating his hands against the steering wheel. Without turning to him, Murphy said, “Zazlo,” Lloyd knew something was up because Joe hadn’t called him that in months, “I’ve been thinkin’. I don’t really know these people. They’re your people—you hired them. I know they’re my faculty, but in this circumstance I know they won’t see it that way. Actually, seeing it that way would make things worse. As my faculty.”

Zazlo knew where this was leading and attempted to preempt Murphy. He said, before Joe could continue, “I know what you’re about to say; but before you do I want to say I think you’re wrong. I may have hired them and come up with schedules for them and helped them with various things—insignificant things to tell you the truth—but I think in this circumstance, I’ve been reading about the situation up at City College and all over, and watching TV, and I think you could handle things much better than me. I mean, they respect you and,” as his trump card Zazlo added, “and you were even a cop. That will count for something.”

Joe wheeled toward him. He throbbing, muscular face no more than six inches from Zazlo’s, “So far you’ve learned nothin’. Nothing!" He spat at Zazlo. I’ve been tryin’ to teach you a few things about the world, and you still act like the fag that you are.” Lloyd had slid as imperceptibly as he could toward his door and inched his hand up to the handle. Murphy reached across him and violently slammed home the door lock. Zazlo resigned himself to meet his fate—whatever that might be—since, he realized, he had little choice.

“Look, I’ll say it to you one last time—we’re at war. This is not about admissions or money or any of the usual faculty bullshit. They want us out of the way. Gone. It’s as simple as that. We see this place as ours and they see it as theirs. It couldn’t be any simpler. When I was commin’ up, we saw the world the same way and we tried to take what was ours. Do you think we negotiated it? ‘Will do this if you give us that’? No way José. I told you about all that. You Jews think the Irish had it easy because we’re white and Catholics. You should only know what we suffered. Al we wanted was a little piece of our own here. But what did we get? Neither shit nor Shineola. All we got was a crack on the head and worse, and so we just took what we saw to be ours. It was simple as that.

“So that’s what’s goin’ on right now, up there in that prick Hartley’s office and, if you want to know the truth, all over the fuckin’ country. They don’t want a couple more teachin’ slots. No, no. They want this campus for themselves. They want his office. Everything. Everything that we fought for and which is rightfully ours. If you think it’s about anything else, you’ll be the first one they shove intothe ovens.”

However terrified Zazlo was, not matter how much he disagreed with Murphy’s view of the world, and there was he realized a vast chasm between them—he had up to then overlooked Joe’s various biases because he was riding his coattails to his own advantage and was titillated by his experience and stories. He also knew that if he were ever to make his own way here or in the larger world it was time now, right now to speak out. To declare himself. More—to do something.

So, in spite of his fear and the risks he knew he would be confronting, Zazlo said, “You’re right. You can’t go in there. They don’t respect you. In fact they hate your fucking Irish guts and all that you stand for. About that I know you’re right, but I suspect you don’t see it that way. So I’m gonna get out of this car right now,” he reached around behind him and popped the lock, “And I’m gonna go into that building and, even if it takes me all night, I’m gonna talk with them, find out what’s going on, and make a deal with them that you and Hartley will honor. And if you don’t,” he added quickly since he felt Murphy tensing, “I promise you I’ll blow the whistle on you and tell those TV guys over there what a bunch of racists you and everyone else here are. And even if I don’t have all my facts straight, I know it will make a good enough story so they’ll still put it on the air and the front page of the News and Times.”

Opening the door, he said one final thing to Joe, “Remember, I know about good stories. I used to write them.”

And with that he got out of the car, slammed the door, and strode toward the front entrance of the Administration Building. Though he remained in his car, Joe yelled at Zazlo’s back, “Once a Kike always a Kike!”

Not pausing or turning to answer, Zazlo smiled to himself, remembering where ironically, a scant ten months ago, he had overheard Murphy say something quite similar about himself.

He had to pee and only hoped he could get to a men’s room before wetting his pants. That would not contribute to his making a forceful impression when he got up to the twelfth floor where his faculty and his students were occupying the dean’s office. He thought that if Benny Anderson was there he probably was telling the students about Corot and how, though he was a son of a successful merchant, young Jean-Baptiste-Camille also had to do battle with his father in order to become an artist.

To be concluded next week . . .