vidual. At 52,
his reputation as a ruthless administrator was well known. Just as
well known was his reputation for fairness. Where he was faulted was
the way he backed up, no matter what, the medical school chairmen
(there were no women) who along with him were called 'The Boy's Club'
by the rest of the medical school faculty.

The Boy's Club often went on retreat. At these meetings, held in
luxurious surroundings, policies and plans were decided and everyone
fell into line, or else. There were those among the faculty that
believed that Sam Broadhurst demanded from the chairs, and took
himself, an oath in blood. This was because they invariably backed
each other up publicly even though privately, they didn't.

Henry knew that the dean was not happy with the way the Trenchant
situation had been handled. The dean was royally pissed that Lyle had
gone over his head to Mark and himself instead of keeping the matter in
the medical school and dealing with it there. He was further incensed
that they had decided to charge Diana and terminate her before he was
even apprised that the situation existed. By the time he was brought
into the process, it was to late for him to do anything but go along
with it.

So Henry wasn't surprised when the dean made it quite clear that he was
not consulted until the central administration had already decided to
terminate Diana. This was so obvious that everyone in the room
realized that he was just doing his job within the system but that
didn't mean that he liked it.

Having thus vented his spleen about the way the affair had been
handled, Dean Broadhurst clearly and forcibly added his opinion to that
of Lyle's in almost a carbon copy of Lyle's relevant testimony.
Clearly and succinctly without the wandering, self serving side trips
taken by Lyle, the dean cast the party line with all the skill of the
accomplished angler he was.

All right. Well done, thought Henry, with transparent relief. At
least things were going all right thus far with this witness.

Esther took over the questioning and asked, "Would five or six SmurFF
critiques out of around 200 have enough weight to influence your
process of evaluating faculty performance in a course?"

The dean sidestepped, "The ones in question were pretty damning
comments."

Esther persisted, "Have you seen the other evaluations? I mean the
ones that are believed to be authentic student feedbacks?"

Here Dean Broadhurst inten