Eleanor closed the last exam booklet for her introductory philosophy class and recorded the grade of 52 percent. Academically, she knew that this was a travesty. This student had failed. But, in the larger scheme of things and with the purpose of education in mind, Eleanor believed that she was doing the right thing. She looked at the student’s name on the front of her exam book – “Misti-Dawn Moon.”
“How could parents do that to a child? If you had to be burdened with the unfortunate last name ‘Moon’ how could you, in good conscience, name your girl child ‘Misti-Dawn’?”
Misti-Dawn was a mincing, simpering young woman. She was pretty, neatly and conservatively dressed and unbelievably stupid. Eleanor wondered. Was this altogether genetic or did her name contribute to the social construction of her stupidity? Would she have fared better if she had been named Artemis or Athena or just plain Jane? Would Jane Moon have traversed introduction to philosophy with more skill?
Eleanor thought back to the first class of the semester when she had presented what she thought to be the uncontroversial classic Aristotelian syllogism.
All men are mortal.
Socrates is a man.
Therefore, Socrates is mortal.
Misti-Dawn had raised her hand.
“Yes?” said Eleanor.
“Well, what about Jesus?” asked Misti-Dawn.
“What about Jesus?” replied Eleanor in what she hoped was an open, tolerant and affirming voice.
“Jesus was a man who died for our sins and went to live with God in heaven,” declared Misti-Dawn.
“Yes,” said Eleanor. “Some people do think so.”
Although Eleanor was not trying to be funny, some students laughed and others rolled their eyes at her.
Eleanor had then gone back to talking about logic. After the class, she worried that she had not handled the exchange very well but soon forgot about it until she received Misti-Dawn’s midterm paper. Eleanor was quite liberal about midterm essay topics and gave students many suggestions. She told students that if they wanted to write about something other than what she had suggested they should discuss the proposed topic with her before they wrote their papers.
One day, during her office hours, Misti-Dawn appeared and said that she wanted to write about abortion. Eleanor warily agreed but told Misti-Dawn that she had to approach the topic logically and analytically. The paper, which came in one day before the due date, was printed on pink paper and neatly fastened in a pink duo-tang folder. The paper entitled, “Sorry but I’ve got to die” was written from the perspective of a fetus which was aborted on the last page of the paper. The final sentences curiously read, “I
have to go now. My mother just killed me.”
After Eleanor had returned the midterm papers in class and gone back to her office, Misti-Dawn had appeared, weeping and outraged by the ‘F’ she had received on the paper. Eleanor had tried to explain that it wasn’t Misti-Dawn’s beliefs that had failed – although she was not altogether sure about that – but rather that the paper had no arguments, no facts and no reasons to support her thesis (if indeed there was one).
Misti-Dawn had cried and said, “But you are just biased against me because you are one of those atheistic feminists. And, miss, you should know that you will be condemned by God to internal damnation because of those beliefs.”
Eleanor responded, “I think you mean eternal damnation.” Although afterward she thought that perpetual dyspepsia would indeed be hell.
Eleanor stopped her reverie, returned to the task at hand and placed Misti-Dawn’s final exam on the pile with the rest of them. But as she sat in her office, her thoughts returned to the importance of names. She thought about her own name, “Eleanor Winnifred Ruggles." She hated Winnifred Ruggles and thought it sounded constipated. Winnifred Ruggles struggles. The only thing that saved her was “Eleanor” which she thought sounded melodious. She thought about her life with more than a little doom. She was 37 year old Associate Professor Ruggles and struggle she did. She struggled to be a good teacher and researcher and good servant to her profession, the university and the world at large. She also sometimes wanted to have fun and wanted to get laid. The latter hadn’t happened all that frequently since she left her intense but uninspiring husband, “Assistant Professor Neil Mellum.” Mellum – melon. That was poor Neil’s problem. His name reminded her of a melon, an uninteresting fruit if there ever was one. She got up to leave her office, thinking, I must re-read Plato’s Cratylus. Plato had some interesting things to say about naming. She just couldn’t remember what they were.
Eleanor had two days before her trip to Berlin where she would present her paper, “Whence epistemology post-post-modernity?” She vacillated between thinking her paper was groundbreaking and thinking it was pointless and vapid. More importantly, she thought, “what would she wear when presenting her paper?” If she got her grades in tomorrow then she would have one day to shop. She should buy something that was chic and that, in an understated way, accentuated her breasts. Eleanor thought that her breasts were her greatest asset after her brains. With that thought she got into her car and headed home.
Three days later, Eleanor was on the plane to Berlin. In the end, it was about three weeks before Eleanor returned to campus. First, there was the conference which she enjoyed a great deal. Then, she had decided, after some misgivings, to attend the post-conference tour of German vineyards. Surprisingly, and to her delight, there were very few bifocaled couples in sensible shoes in the group and those there were actually were interesting and fun. She also had one flattering flirtation which started during the conference and concluded the night before she left for England to do some research. She
had two great weeks in London, combining research, theatre, shopping, and visits to old friends whom she hadn’t seen in some time.
Rested and happy, she returned to her office in late May, ready to work on revising her book manuscript for publication.
She was opening her office door when she saw the Chair of the department waving to her from the other end of the corridor. She smiled, waved back, and went into her office.
Five minutes later, the phone rang and Arnold Smith, the Chair, was on the phone.
“How was the conference?” he asked.
“Great,” she said. “My paper was very well received and will be published in the selected proceedings.”
“Well,” said Arnold. “That’s very good. To change the subject, do you have a moment to come and see me in my office? Something has come up while you were away.”
Eleanor said of course and headed down the hall with dread and the premonition of bad things to come. “What could this be about?” she wondered.
When she entered his office, Arnold stood up and gestured toward the only obvious chair in which she might sit as the other two were laden with piles of books. Arnold asked her if she wanted coffee which she declined hoping that this would expedite his getting to the point.
“Well,” said Arnold, “I am glad to know that your conference went well.”
Eleanor smiled through clenched teeth. “What’s up?” she asked.
“Yes, well, the day after the grades were posted to students by email, one of your students filed an appeal of her grade.”
Eleanor waited.
“She said that you were biased against her because of her Christian beliefs,” he continued.
“Misti-Dawn Moon?” Eleanor exclaimed. “But she shouldn’t have even passed. I’m sure that she must have flunked her other courses.”
As soon as these words left her mouth, Eleanor regretted her precipitous tongue. Arnold’s expression confirmed the imprudence of her remarks.
“Well, you’ve just summed up a lot of the problems here. On the one hand, she didn’t fail anything else. In fact, in all the rest of her courses, she got ‘Bs.’ She took courses like psychology, biology – courses where at the first year level the task is mainly memorization and it turns out that M-D, as I’ve come to think of her, is a pretty good little memorizer. Then there is the other part of the issue. You gave her a ‘D’ with the numeric grade of 52 percent. Because she appealed her grade, one of your colleagues in the department re-graded all of her assignments and thought that an ‘F’ or 20 percent would have been a more reasonable assessment. She seems to have no grasp of philosophy at all - something which you seem to know yourself. The professor that re-read the papers thinks that there should be an investigation of your grading standards.”
Eleanor sat there mortified. Her face felt unpleasantly hot and her stomach muscles keep clenching as if she were attempting isometric exercises while she listened. In a few short moments, her sense of world triumph had turned into one of ignominious failure.
She spit out the next question, “And, what happens to M-D?” adopting Arnold’s short hand for her student’s name.
“Well,” said Arnold, “You know the appeal rules here. Some people would think that they are harsh but the university doesn’t want frivolous appeals. Unless she wants to take it to the Senate Committee on Academic Appeals which probably will uphold the first appeal, her final grade will be the 20 percent grade, not the more generous but seemingly unearned 52 percent. So, I guess she won’t think you were biased or else she’ll conclude that all philosophers are biased atheists.”
“All doomed to internal damnation,” Eleanor muttered.
“What’s that?” asked Arnold.
“Nothing,” Eleanor replied. “And, what happens to me now?”
“Nothing,” said Arnold. “I’ve known you for seven years now, Eleanor. I think I know how this happened and I don’t think that it will happen again. You are a fine teacher and I have every confidence in your ability to grade fairly – with this one, notable exception.”
“So, who re-read her papers?” she asked.
“I can’t tell you that, Eleanor,” he replied, “that is confidential.”
“That sounds like bull-shit to me, Arnold. I thought you should be able to face your accuser when you are charged with an offense.”
“I’m sorry you feel like that, Eleanor. I just thought that I had to let you know what had transpired in your absence.” Arnold, a pleasant and even-handed person, respected by even the more difficult of his colleagues, stood up and said, “These kinds of incidents are lessons learned, I guess.”
“I don’t know what I’m supposed to learn from this one,” Eleanor harrumphed as she exited his office.
For the rest of that summer, Eleanor eyed all of her colleagues with suspicion. For a while she fastened on Professor Harold Lucas, one of those unpleasantly pedantic fellows who she was sure had cast the sole negative vote when she had been up for tenure and promotion. She commented vindictively to one of her women friends in the art history department that he was one of those unfortunate men who seemed to get higher-waisted every year as his chest sunk and his belly grew. Eleanor took cheap pleasure in saying, “By the time he is sixty, he’ll be wearing his belt as a bow tie.”
After the summer, she thought about this less and less. Ultimately she gave up trying to figure out who had suggested that there needed to be an investigation into her grading standards but she never entirely forgot.
Five years passed and Eleanor was duly promoted to full professor and feeling that all was right in her world. One day there was a knock on her door and Misti-Dawn stepped into her office. She looked just the same but was holding a small child by the hand. M-D sporule, thought Eleanor unkindly. Eleanor also saw a modestly-sized wedding ring on Misti-Dawn’s left hand.“Who is this little person?” asked Eleanor.
“This is my daughter, Luna,” replied Misti-Dawn.
“Luna Moon? You called your daughter, Moon Moon?” Eleanor said with incredulity.
“No, miss, we called her Luna. She will be known by her father’s last name of Martin. I wanted her to have some of my heritage too,” said Misti-Dawn with dignity.
“What can I do for you, Misti-Dawn?” inquired Eleanor. She thought that maybe Misti-Dawn had come to apologize for accusing her of bias all of those years ago.
“I am graduating this spring, Miss, and I just thought I’d drop by and see if you have found it in your heart to accept Jesus as your personal savior,” she said.
“No, Misti-Dawn,” said Eleanor slowly and without malice. “I guess I have to look forward to never-ending internal damnation – just as you predicted.”
“I will pray for you then,” said Misti-Dawn.
“I don’t see how that could hurt,” smiled Eleanor, as Misti-Dawn picked up her little girl and left.
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