actually read the article, and before he reached the bottom of the page, the
student ahead of Sarah stomped out and she found herself impaled on the azure
gaze of the chief bureaucrat of the College of Sciences and Humanities. "How,"
said Mrs. Santucci crisply, "may I help you?"
Mrs. Santucci was polite. Her determination to be decent, and to make all
things decent, was like that of all the Iranian Revolutionary Guards combined.
Her policy of no-first-use meant that as long as we were objective and polite,
any conversation would slide pleasantly down greased iron rails into a pit
of despair. Any first strike by us, any remarks deemed improper by this
grandmother of twenty-six and player of two dozen simultaneous bingo cards,
would bring down massive retaliation. Sarah knew her. She arose primly and
moved to the front chair of the line to look across a barren desk at Mrs.
Santucci.
"I'm a senior in this college. I was lucky enough to get an out-of-Plex
apartment for this fall. When I got there today I found that the entire block
of buildings had been shut down for eight months by the Board of Health. I
went to Housing. Upon reaching the head of that line, I was told that it was
being handled by Student Affairs. Upon reaching the head of the line there, I
was given this form and told to get signatures at Housing and right here.
Mrs. Santucci reached out with the briskness that only old secretaries can
approach and seized the papers. "This form is already signed," she informed
Sarah.
"Right. I got that done at about one o'clock. But when I got to my new
temporary room assignment it turned out to be the B-men's coffee lounge and
storeroom for the northeast quad of the first sublevel. It is full of B-men
all the time. You know how they are-- they don't speak much English, and you
know what kinds of things they decorate their walls with"-- this attempt to
get Mrs. Santucci's sympathy by being prissy was not obviously successful--
"and I can't possibly live there. I returned to Housing. To change my room
assignment is a whole new procedure, and I need a form from you which says I'm
in good academic standing so far this semester."
"That form," Mrs. Santucci noted, "will require signatures from all your
instructors."
"I know," said Sarah. All was going according to plan and she was approaching
the center of her pitch. "But the semester hasn't started yet! And half my
courses don't even have teachers assigned! So, since I'm a senior and my GPA
is good, could the Dean okay my room change without the form? Doesn't that
make sense? Sort of?" Sarah sighed. She had broken at the end, her confidence
destroyed by Mrs. Santucci's total impassivity, by those arms folded across
a navy-blue bosom like the Hoover Dam, by a stare like the headlights of an
oncoming streetsweeper.
"I'm sure this is all unnecessary. Perhaps they don't know that their lounge
has been reassigned. If you can just explain matters to them, I'm sure that
