Caitlin found herself grinding her teeth as she sat in the wooden desk chair that Ridgefield College provided in every dorm room. Her laptop was open, and she was looking at her Econ 101 slides, trying to distract herself, but her heart wasn't really in it. Her eyes kept glancing to the bottom right of her screen. It was 8:57 and the college punishment technician was supposed to knock on her door in three minutes.
It was a new program here at Ridgefield based on the Punishment Codes established a few years ago by the legislature that allowed low level crimes to be punished with corporal punishments. The Office of Student Behavior, a department inside the larger Office of Student Affairs, assured all new incoming students that the first trial of the so-called Ridgefield Codes was designed with input from all stakeholders of the college, administrators, faculty, staff, and students, and that their incorporation into the fabric of the institution was going to be slow and iterative, with changes, based on feedback, incorporated after each semester.
Only new students, freshmen and transfer students, were subject to the Ridgefield Codes. Sophomores, Juniors, and Seniors were still subject to the old disciplinary system of administrative write-ups, fines, and potentially a student trial. Each year, as seniors graduated and a new class joined the college, a higher percentage of the student body would enter the program and, in four years, the transition would be complete.
The cautious and contemplative approach to the codes did nothing to make Caitlin feel any better. She had seen in the student newspaper, the Ridgefield Current, that the first punishments had been carried out the previous week, but she still knew that she must be among the first dozen or so students to get the dreaded knock on the door.
KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK
Caitlin jumped and looked over her shoulder at the door. This was so unfair. She'd broken the rules, but she still didn't think she'd done anything wrong. It was just a hot plate! Her mom had bought it for her so she could boil water for spaghetti and ramen, and she hadn't even thought twice about putting it out on the edge of her desk. When the fire marshal came through, which apparently happened the first month of every semester, it was confiscated, and she'd gotten written up for possessing a fire hazard.
She took a deep breath as she closed her laptop and got up. She knew she wasn't even the only person in her dorm hall to have a so-called hazard. Her friend, Tatiana, a few doors down had a whole espresso machine, but she'd known to hide it until after the marshal came through, the benefits of having an older sister at the school.
Her desk was right next to the door so it took less than one step to reach out and turn the knob. When it opened, she was surprised.
"That could be much worse,"
she thought as she beheld the woman that stood in front of her holding a large black bag. The woman was young, maybe only a decade older than Caitlin, and dressed in dark blue medical scrubs with dark blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail. She was skinny, slightly rosy cheeked, and a few inches taller than Caitlin, which wasn't hard as the teenager was only 5'3".
"Hello," the woman said, reaching out a hand, "I'm Eloise Wendell and I'm from the Office of Student Behavior."
"Yeah, um, I figured," Caitlin said, ignoring the woman's hand and stepping back and letting the woman into her dorm room.
"Thank you," the woman said, acknowledging the invitation into her room. She entered and looked around the cramped bedroom. The room was rectangular. Across from the door was Caitlin's wooden desk, with a tall back and shelves and covered in notebooks and pencils. Behind the desk was Caitlin's bed, covered in a pink bedspread and a pillow against the far wall. In a mirror image, her roommate's (a nice girl named Alice who was avoiding the room for the next hour) setup was the same. A dark blue blanket covered Alice's bed and her desk was covered in magazine cutouts of celebrity men she found attractive. Near Alice's desk was the one small closet they shared. A rough blue rug covered the tile floor in between the two beds and a wooden dresser, provided by the college and matching the pale wood color of the desks, stood underneath the window that usually looked out over a patch of woods on their rural campus, but Caitlin had drawn the shades, knowing what might happen in the next hour. The beds were tall, owing to the limited closet space, and each of the girls had brought plastic boxes to hold most of their stuff which was under their beds. Underneath Alice's bed there was the low hum of their shared minifridge that held water bottles and diet soda. "Could you show me your ID please?" the woman said, using a pleasant tone.
"Yeah," Caitlin said. She reached toward her desk and took her phone which had a holder for her cards. She took out her college ID and handed it to Eloise who examined it. Caitlin had brown hair that went just below her shoulder. It naturally had big loose curls that she often had to brush out from her eyes. On her ID, she had a nice smile, and a strong jawline and cheeks with a slight bump in her nose that she could never decide if she liked or not.
"Caitlin Riordan?" she asked.
"Yep," Caitlin answered before correcting herself, "Yes, ma'am."
"You don't need to be formal. I know this is hard but I'm not here to make it harder than it needs to be. Feel free to call me Eloise," Eloise said.
"Ok," Caitlin answered.
"Why don't you sit down. We have some things to talk about," Eloise said.
Caitlin nodded and sat down at her desk, turning the chair to face Eloise who stood at the opening of the corridor between the two beds.
"As I said, I'm Eloise Wendell and I'm from the Office of Student Behavior. I'm here to carry out a punishment given to you by the Office which you have decided to not contest. Is it true you don't contest the finding that you had a prohibited fire hazard in the dorm?"
"Yeah, that's right," Caitlin said, looking a little past Eloise, unable to look her in the eye.
"Ok, good. A little bit about myself then. Officially, I am an Assistant Punishment Consultant, though usually I would just call myself a punishment technician. Before being here at Ridgefield, I worked in a government judicial center, so I am an expert and I want you to know that you're safe in my hands," she continued. Caitlin raised her eyebrows and tilted her head. "I know that might not make you feel better, but I decided to come here because I want to work in a position where the punishments are less severe and focused on changing your behavior. I know that what I do isn't fun and I have a duty to teach you a lesson about breaking rules but I'm going to make it as easy as I can."
Caitlin shrugged and looked down at the floor. She was unenthused as she answered, "Ok, I guess that's good."
"I think so too, and the Ridgefield Codes give the both of us some latitude to make it easier, ok?" Eloise responded, with cheeriness that Caitlin thought did not fit the situation.
"What does that mean?" the teenager asked.
"It means the punishment happens here in your dorm instead of a center or a public place, for one, and it's me here, alone, instead of a man since we have a commitment to same gender technicians. It also means that if you listen to directions there won't be any cuffs or other restraints," Eloise answered.
Caitlin hadn't thought of those things and found herself nodding along, "Ok, but what do I have to do. I still don't know what the... punishment, I guess, is going to be."
"You're right," the technician said, "There are two parts to the punishment and one of those parts is actually up to you."
"What do you mean?" the teenager wondered.
"So the first part," Eloise continued, not answering her directly, "Is that we are going to take some pictures, both clothed and unclothed."
"What?" Caitlin jumped, her eyes going wide.
"Just relax. No one is going to see them except me. The Codes are still being tested, for now, and in the future it's possible that publication of pictures will be part of the punishment but for now we are still testing the technology."
"I don't get it," the student reiterated.
