Poetic Justice by Amanda Cross

sufficient attention paid, some meaning might be discerned; the hope, however, proved illusory. “Is that a quotation,” he patiently asked, “perhaps from some misty Maeterlinck-like drama?” This question, which was not intended to be, and was not delivered as though it were, insulting, aroused Professor Peter Packer Pollinger to the highest reaches of indignation.
    “Mist be damned,” he said. “It is a question of symbolism, whoever you are. Same as the English toward the Irish; pure snobbism. That adult college is a symbol to you, and you and you,” he nodded, causing his mustache to quiver as he indicated Clemance, Cudlipp, and O’Toole. “I know the reason. Cudlipp went to University College himself when it was still just a group of extension courses, after they threw him out of the College and before they took him back. I thought Levy’s book large and exceptional, and I am inclined to praise it extravagantly. You,” he said to O’Toole, “are lost in an obscure wood.” He puffed again through his mustache, leaving his on the whole pleased audience to infer that the obscure wood occurred in one of Miss Macleod’s misty dramas.
    “Surely,” Clemance continued, “we are wandering rather from the point. At least,” he added, anticipating another outburst, “from my point. Whatever our views may be on the University College, they are not the most germane points to be made at the present time. The Administrative Council has, I believe, undertaken to study the needs of the University as a whole. Doubtless we will all be asked to present our points of view, if any. Meanwhile, it seems to me perhaps irregular to consider promoting to tenure assistant professors whoseservice is entirely in a school whose future in the University is problematical.”
    Are you just trying to smooth it all over? Kate thought. She wondered if Peter Packer Pollinger’s allegations against Cudlipp could possibly be true. Interesting. Professor Goddard, who taught medieval literature and whose specialty was
Piers Plowman
, rose to his feet.
    “I don’t follow Professor Clemance’s reasoning at all. In the first place, it is our business to promote people on the basis of their ability and possible service to the Department, not on the future of any school in the University. In the second place, I am on the Council to which Professor Clemance refers, and I don’t think I’m betraying any confidences by saying that the Council is also studying whether or not The College has a place today in an urban university like this, whose reputation has been made largely through its graduate offerings. I don’t mind saying that my own inclination is to consider that a college for adults is more to the point in New York than a college for overgrown schoolboys from whose ranks, I need not remind all of you, came most of the instigators of last spring’s disturbances.”
    Into the awed silence which followed this remark Kate spoke. “I wondered,” she said, “how many of us here do, in fact, have students from University College in our classes. The College, as we know, has always avoided cross-listing courses with the Graduate School, but I have only recently learned that University College does, in fact, encourage students to enter many of our courses. How many here do have University College students in their classes?”
    “I might add,” Michaels said, “that such a show ofhands will be unofficial, and its results not recorded in our minutes. Is it all right with you, Professor Fansler, if your question remains unrecorded too?”
    “Certainly,” Kate said. “I asked it for my own information, and so that I might follow it with another question, also off the record if you like, at least for the present: How good are those students?”
    Tentatively at first, and then with more assurance as the number of hands in the air increased, the professors indicated the presence of University College students in their classes. Professor