Learning Curves - By Elyse Mady Page 0,67
no reassurance at all.
Focus on what she needs to do?
How could Brandon imagine she could focus on herself at a time like this? His academic and professional life hung in the balance and he was just standing there, acting as if it didn’t matter, as if he didn’t matter. Well, he was wrong. He mattered to her.
“No,” she said resolutely, “I’m not going anywhere until someone explains these ridiculous charges to me. If you won’t defend yourself, then I will.”
His mouth tipped up in a ghostly shadow of its usual brilliance, one lone dimple making a fleeting appearance. “Trust you for that.”
“Leanne—” Dean Kessler spoke now, his narrow face creased with concern and displeasure, “—are you and this student involved?” He asked it as though the very thought was distasteful.
“Yes.”
“No.”
The administrators looked perplexed by the discrepancy but Brandon’s mouth was set in a tight, implacable line that said he was in no mood to expand on the inconsistencies in their positions.
Turning to Dean Rose, Leanne pleaded, “Please tell me what’s going on.”
She sighed. “Brandon admitted that he has been working a second job in direct contravention of his signed fellowship agreement. Someone—a former Wellington student—informed the university yesterday that in addition to working as a teaching assistant here and taking a tuition scholarship, he was also working as an exotic dancer.”
Leanne’s jaw dropped. Somehow, someone had connected Brandon’s work at the Foxe’s Den to his studies here at the university. But who would be so cruel as to expose him and set in motion such serious repercussions? Her mind boggled even as her anger flared at the university’s unsympathetic response. They had no interest in the extenuating circumstances of Brandon’s case or working toward a solution that would allow him to continue on at the university. Instead, they were going to throw him under the bus without so much as a how do you do. It was ridiculous.
“But it has nothing to do with his work here,” she insisted. “You’re threatening to put a permanent mark on his transcript and derail his entire academic career because he exceeded his allocated work hours?”
Dean Kessler scoffed. “It has everything to do with his work here. We are an institution whose continued success rests largely on its august and longstanding reputation for scholarly excellence. In addition to explicitly contravening the funding agreement he signed by working at an additional, undeclared job, this student’s actions—the job he’s been working!—seriously threaten to bring that excellence into disrepute.”
Contravening the funding agreement was a technicality. It was less about the rules and all about the university’s reputation. They were worried about the possible embarrassment that would ensue if Brandon’s out-of-hours job became widely known.
“It does nothing of the sort,” Leanne argued. “You’re blowing this issue out of proportion. He could promise to quit. To leave the club behind him. Why would anyone else ever make the connection? Or care?”
The dean looked at her in disbelief. “One Wellington alumna making the connection is one too many in my opinion.
“I know half a dozen students who do work under the table. They need the money too, and I don’t see you throwing the book at them. Just Brandon. It’s unfair and I won’t let you do that to him.”
“I’m afraid you don’t have any standing in the matter, Leanne.”
“Dean Rose, surely you don’t agree with this,” she pleaded.
The Dean of Humanities sighed. “I was overruled.”
“Brandon, you’ve got to fight this.”
“Leanne,” he said stiffly, “I appreciate your concern but I can handle this on my own.”
On his own.
The phrase echoed through Leanne’s mind like a death knell. He’d been on his own his entire life and with a blinding burst of insight, she realized that to someone like Brandon, this moment would seem like the inevitable final move in a game he’d been playing since he was young. One step forward, two steps back. He’d fought and clawed his way from the chaos of his childhood to this point. He’d wanted to succeed but in the back of his mind, there would always be voices telling him not to bother, to give up now, that his efforts were futile.
But she knew him so much better now and knew how much he could accomplish. He wasn’t a failure. He was a survivor. One who thought he had to fight every battle alone. But he didn’t. She would fight beside him. He’d given her the chance to find her own strength; the least she could do was lend him some of it