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This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to events or people, living, dead, or fictional is entirely unintended. Sexual activity should occur only between consenting adults in the absence of coercion. What is sexy in fantasy may be appalling in reality; do not confuse the one for the other.
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My shoes thumped softly on the stone as I walked up the path to Kelcy House. A moderately large, two story building of red brick and marble, Kelcy House was the primary office space, and residence, of our university president. I'd been here several times before, both on my own for one meeting or another or accompanying Mike, and usually enjoyed my visits. But today was going to be different.
I shifted my tote to my other hand so that I could grasp the front door handle and mentally reviewed my plan. Our last President had served in the role for more than a decade and had been a genial older man with a respectable academic background. He had retired and, after an intense and contentious year of job interviews, the Trustees had seen fit to appoint Douglas Sims as our new President. The announcement had provoked a reaction from the faculty, and not at all a positive one.
The problem is that before his appointment, President Sims had been Mr. Sims, which is to say, he had not been Dr. Sims or Professor Sims. Our new President had no PhD and in fact had no experience working at a university at all. Instead, he was a wealthy businessman who had made his fortune with a franchise tanning salon business and a series of books on how to make it in big business. Could he run a business? Obviously. Could he run a large business? Maybe. It was hard to tell since, despite the number of tanning locations he was connected to, the franchise arrangement meant that the actual business he himself ran was quite small. Could he run an academic enterprise? The faculty had its doubts.
In principle, it might not be a problem since a core aspect of the President's job was fundraising for the university. Find people with money, listen to what they care about, and then convince them that writing a check to your institution is the best way to address those concerns. It was a simple formula, but one that was often hard to execute, and you might reasonably argue that President Sims' background made him better qualified for the role than, say, a prominent former English professor. But that's not the entirety of the President's job. They also set university priorities, make final decisions on tenure cases, and shape a whole array of other key policies that mean everything for whether the university was an effective generator of research and educated students (not to mention revenue for the state), or a backwater with a dwindling stock of qualified faculty and sub-par students. Unlike his potential to secure funding, President Sims had nothing in his background to suggest he had any idea what he was doing with the rest of his job. There was no reason to think he'd be better at running the university than I'd be at running a tanning salon. But, he was a friend of the Governor and the Trustees had spoken, so it was up to us to make it work.
For the last few years I'd been one of my unit's Faculty Senators, meaning I helped represent our interests and concerns to one of the key governing bodies of the university. In particular, I was one of the only pure teaching faculty to hold the role, and so I'd found myself more and more involved in administration of one sort or another. To my surprise, the Chair of the Senate had asked me to join a small group welcoming President Sims and, hopefully, putting a polite bug in his ear about issues that were really important. The last two weeks had been intensely busy, as I held down my teaching, tried to advance my research and made time to prepare for my big chance to set the new president on a good path. I was ready. Or, at least, that's what I told myself as I turned right in the foyer and headed towards the first floor conference room.
I had to make sure I was taken seriously, but that might not be so hard in this case. Sims wasn't an academic, so he might lack the automatic belief that tenure track faculty were better than teaching faculty. Nonetheless, I'd dressed carefully for the meeting. Black shoes with low, wide heels; sensible heels, if you will. Grey slacks that fit me well without being revealing and a navy blue shirt with silver buttons and a silver necklace Mike had given me with three sapphires in it.
It was late in the day and nobody seemed to be around, but this wasn't unusual. High level administrators are never really off of the clock and if they want to meet after five, when the staff have gone, that's when you meet. It was quiet as I walked down the hall, my footsteps swallowed by thick carpet. The door to the conference room was closed so, after checking my watch to make sure I wasn't early, I knocked firmly on the door.
"Come in," a deep voice replied from inside, and I opened the wooden door and stepped through.
Inside the window blinds were drawn against the late afternoon sun and a tall, narrow man with sharp features was looking up from his laptop.
"Dr. Drake?" he asked, rising to his feet.
"It's a pleasure to meet you, President Sims," I answered, crossing the room to take his hand.
His grip was firm, if a bit bony, and I took a moment to study him. Thinning brown hair cut short, pale blue eyes deeply set in his face under thin eyebrows. His face was long and every bone well-defined; not gaunt by any means, but trim. His arms and legs were long and his stomach flat. If he were any thinner I suspected he'd have difficulty avoiding scarecrow nicknames.
"Thank you for coming so late!" he said, releasing my hand, and gesturing me to a seat on the far side of the table, near to where he was sitting. I hesitated for a moment, and then slipped past him to reach it, catching a whiff of his cologne as I did. I placed my tote on the table and settled into the offered seat. The room was otherwise empty.
"I'm the first to arrive?"
He nodded as he sat back down, "I'm afraid so. It's a small group, though, so don't worry. I... uh, I don't want to get ahead of myself, but I have a suspicion that you'd like to address some topics other than just a pleasant welcome?"
I leaned back in my seat and gave him a frank look, "I do, as it happens. How did you know?"
He grinned, "Well, I might have read a thing or two about how the faculty reacted to my appointment. Gave me a hint, you know?"
I nodded, raising my opinion of the man a notch. It was a good sign that he was paying attention to faculty opinion; a lot of people used to giving orders struggle in academic poisitions, since universities are not businesses. Maybe this wouldn't be so bad?
"So, since we're waiting for the rest of the party, why don't you get started? If nothing else, it'll help us wrap up and go home that much quicker."
"Of course, President Sims," I answered, reaching into my tote for my notepad. It felt a bit weird to be the only one here, but there was no sense missing the opportunity.
"I had planned to simply welcome you to begin with but, taking things a bit out of order, one issue that I have to raise is demands for larger numbers of seats in introductory courses without additional faculty positions or improvements to facilities," I began, continuing into well-rehearsed remarks that boiled down to saying we had too many bodies and not enough resources to deal with them all.
He looked up from the notes he was taking at one point and interjected, "That sounds like a college-level issue, not a university issue."
If you don't understand what he means, think of colleges as like states and the university as the federal government and you won't be too far wrong.The President and Provost were at the "Federal" level, and ultimately in charge of a lot of big stuff, but the colleges at the "State" level had their own powers, problems, and leadership. It's confusing, but it's been a workable system for the last five hundred years or so.
