Harstad had unbounded patience, the very patience that drove Chairman X bananas, patience as a weapon. At meetings, when Dean Harstad was delving deeply into his patience, he would close his eyes. It was a remarkably infuriating gesture, especially to Chairman X, who had probably never closed his eyes voluntarily in his whole life.
Chairman X had a private fantasy of killing Dean Harstad. While normally a believer in the larger forces of history, and ready at any time to discount a theory of history that privileged “great men,” Chairman X did feel that there were key individuals, uniquely destructive, who could not be replaced, after whose demise life on the planet would actually be better, and Dean Harstad was one of these. Hitler, Stalin, Nils Harstad. The urge to violence was what Chairman X, a flower-man, a believer in perennials, struggled against. Neither vegetarianism nor Buddhism, neither long study of Japanese gardening theory nor the example of the Lady X, a mild and generous woman, had quenched his desire to kill Dean Harstad, preferably with his bare hands, staring right into the eyes, forcing him, at the last moment, to recant, to regret, to know his life as worse than bankrupt.
Chairman X consciously released his grip on the shovel he was throttling, and hung it gently on its hook in the tool building, then washed his hands, and went up to his office to write a memo. It read,
From: Chairman of Horticulture Department
To: Provost’s Office
Subject: Morgantown Hall (“Old Meats”)
I have noticed activity around the loading dock entrance to Old Meats. It was my understanding that the building is abandoned and part of the structure is condemned until renovations have been approved. You might look into what’s going on over there, in case some students have gotten keys and are using the building for nonacademic activities.
Of course, this memo would never reach the provost, nor was it intended to. The Chairman stuck it into a campus envelope and addressed it to Mrs. Walker, provost’s office. That was how you got anything done on this campus.
9
A Party
D UBUQUE H OUSE HAD always been known, with a thrill among the customers and a shudder in the administration, for parties. For a few years in the mid-eighties, the resident assistants had, of their own accord, gone through the dorm and removed mirrors from the bathrooms. Even without shards of glass and sharp metal frames, even with bags checked at the door and paper cups for beer, it had been surprising what the drunken customers could transform into weapons, and every party had ended in a fight, and every fight had ended in one or two hospitalizations. In 1986, the administration had quietly decided to end coeducation in Dubuque House. With no male customers living there, plenty of security, and strict instructions to the female customers to lock their doors and keep them locked until they went to bed, THEN to lock themselves in, the rate of unfortunate incidents had dropped almost to zero, and the administration had turned its attention back to fraternity row. It was too bad, some thought, that you couldn’t bar male customers from the fraternities, too, or, even, from assembling in groups larger than three anywhere on the campus, but given the impossibility of that Utopia, the best you could hope for was keeping them confined to their own area. That was what fraternity row was for.
Dubuque House parties were still the best on campus. Actual bands, good ones, came from Chicago and Kansas City, and actual dancing took place far into the night. Without boys and boys’ rooms, there was less danger of rape, and the dorm was far enough from fraternity row, all the way across the campus, that a girl would have sobered up from the walk before she was halfway there. Those who passed out and were left by their dates under bushes and trees were picked up by campus security and efficiently taken home. There had never been a case of injury through exposure
Chairman X had a private fantasy of killing Dean Harstad. While normally a believer in the larger forces of history, and ready at any time to discount a theory of history that privileged “great men,” Chairman X did feel that there were key individuals, uniquely destructive, who could not be replaced, after whose demise life on the planet would actually be better, and Dean Harstad was one of these. Hitler, Stalin, Nils Harstad. The urge to violence was what Chairman X, a flower-man, a believer in perennials, struggled against. Neither vegetarianism nor Buddhism, neither long study of Japanese gardening theory nor the example of the Lady X, a mild and generous woman, had quenched his desire to kill Dean Harstad, preferably with his bare hands, staring right into the eyes, forcing him, at the last moment, to recant, to regret, to know his life as worse than bankrupt.
Chairman X consciously released his grip on the shovel he was throttling, and hung it gently on its hook in the tool building, then washed his hands, and went up to his office to write a memo. It read,
From: Chairman of Horticulture Department
To: Provost’s Office
Subject: Morgantown Hall (“Old Meats”)
I have noticed activity around the loading dock entrance to Old Meats. It was my understanding that the building is abandoned and part of the structure is condemned until renovations have been approved. You might look into what’s going on over there, in case some students have gotten keys and are using the building for nonacademic activities.
Of course, this memo would never reach the provost, nor was it intended to. The Chairman stuck it into a campus envelope and addressed it to Mrs. Walker, provost’s office. That was how you got anything done on this campus.
9
A Party
D UBUQUE H OUSE HAD always been known, with a thrill among the customers and a shudder in the administration, for parties. For a few years in the mid-eighties, the resident assistants had, of their own accord, gone through the dorm and removed mirrors from the bathrooms. Even without shards of glass and sharp metal frames, even with bags checked at the door and paper cups for beer, it had been surprising what the drunken customers could transform into weapons, and every party had ended in a fight, and every fight had ended in one or two hospitalizations. In 1986, the administration had quietly decided to end coeducation in Dubuque House. With no male customers living there, plenty of security, and strict instructions to the female customers to lock their doors and keep them locked until they went to bed, THEN to lock themselves in, the rate of unfortunate incidents had dropped almost to zero, and the administration had turned its attention back to fraternity row. It was too bad, some thought, that you couldn’t bar male customers from the fraternities, too, or, even, from assembling in groups larger than three anywhere on the campus, but given the impossibility of that Utopia, the best you could hope for was keeping them confined to their own area. That was what fraternity row was for.
Dubuque House parties were still the best on campus. Actual bands, good ones, came from Chicago and Kansas City, and actual dancing took place far into the night. Without boys and boys’ rooms, there was less danger of rape, and the dorm was far enough from fraternity row, all the way across the campus, that a girl would have sobered up from the walk before she was halfway there. Those who passed out and were left by their dates under bushes and trees were picked up by campus security and efficiently taken home. There had never been a case of injury through exposure
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