When I arrived at Remus, I was one of eight new professors starting that fall semester. That sounds like a lot of new faces for one college to have in a year. If a college has a huge student body, that number does not sound like much. However, Remus was a smaller school with around eleven hundred students attending annually. Was the college witnessing record growth? No. In fact, the school was in the middle of a decline. The numbers dropped to nearly fifty percent of their record highs from a few years before. So why were there so many new faculty hires? The answer to that will become evident as the story goes along, but the short version is that faculty either look for greener pastures, quit without warning, or die. The ones who died typically worked at Remus for so long that they had no other alternatives or embraced the misery as penance for their sins.

The average new hire meeting had six fresh victims, but I was part of the bumper crop that included a second new department member this year. She was a woman who, I believe, was roughly my age. I never did learn how old she was because you don’t ask women those things. I always thought that was strange. What is so scary about admitting your age? Is it a mortality thing? Is it a question of vanity? I recently read a research article about how we will die one day. So, I don’t understand the nature of this supposed taboo. As for that article, it was some groundbreaking stuff. Just think how many times people will cite you in future publications. I wish I had thought of it. Getting anything academically published is just so hard. The level of scrutiny that a three-person editorial board puts into a research piece that twelve people will read is astonishing.

I may not have ever asked my fellow new hire about her age, but I do know her name. This feat is stunning, considering how scarce she was around campus. Her name was Nicole Leary, and her task on campus was to revive the floundering radio program. The previous president had a massive hard-on for radio, which flies in the face of his notorious technophobia. I suppose if you grew up with a particular technology, you would have more comfort with it. Leary’s job was simple. Her responsibilities included teaching two courses and spending the rest of the day getting students on the air. In fact, that was the decree of President Francis. He wanted students on the air more than anything else for the radio station.

His demands were not unwarranted. The history of the college radio station is almost as fascinating as the rest of Remus College. If anything, it reflects the institution’s current state better than any other aspect of the college. Previously, the radio station was under the guidance of two professors – Doakes and James. Both of whom had the leadership and administrative qualities of iron slag. Initially, the professors and their plan showed potential, but that promise burned off during the smelting process. As a result, the only remaining thing is a husk that offers little value and ends up in a dump somewhere. Now that is a glowing endorsement somebody wants as their legacy when talking about their run with a radio station.

Apparently, it was quite the tenure from all accounts. Professor Joseph Doakes was best described as a “pear-shaped loser” by the students who worked with him. Doakes could barely speak without breathing heavily, and his mannerisms were out of touch with the students he taught. In his online journalism class, he would read the newspaper aloud to students because he had no idea how news on the Internet worked, and he wasn’t about to try and find out. The students often compared him to your one uncle, who is far removed from the pulse of current trends and practices that they still use terms that aren’t overtly racist but leave you wondering if they still think Douglas McArthur was still in charge. Doakes couldn’t connect with the students but did not struggle when it came to facing any formidable buffet line. His obesity issues were so bad that he could only teach in buildings with ramps and double doors. It would become problematic because some buildings were so old that they did not possess such amenities. So, it would come as no surprise that he would eventually have a stroke, rendering him practically inaudible, a quality unbecoming of a radio personality. 

It did not help the predicament that his colleague, Professor Orenthal James, was in. Where Doakes was living in a different era, James was living on another plane of existence and not in a productive way. That plane was flooded with whiskey, and James was not a good swimmer. Legend has it that he practically bathed in alcohol every day. It was allegedly so bad that from the first day of class until the end of the semester, James would show up to class, put his head down on the desk, and let the students do whatever they pleased. His attendance policy stated if you attended half of the scheduled classes during the semester and sat there quietly, you would receive an A for the course. If he saw two of you in his booze haze, he would count your attendance as double. On a serious note, alcoholism is not funny, but when somebody cannot get through a single class without it, this might be a red flag indicating that you need to get out of the education game. Alcohol and academics go hand in hand, but if your body sweat is eighty-proof, it is time to reconsider some things.

In the end, both professors were released the semester before my hiring. Doakes was understandable. Given his condition, there was nothing the administration could do for him. James was a last-minute decision at the behest of President Francis. I guess Francis got tired of blowing a 0.08 on a breathalyzer after talking to James on the phone. In-person, it would be almost four times the legal limit.

The work of this dynamic duo was the insurmountable standard that Leary had to surpass. To me, this sounded easier than remembering how to breathe. She needed to get students on air without farting on the microphone and teach some sort of content in her classes. Maybe she would show pictures of a radio receiver so students would know what one looked like. There was just one problem; these demands were below her social standing. She did not fulfill any of these job responsibilities in any capacity. In fact, both the stroke victim and the alcoholic were more productive during their time at the station. This woman’s slothfulness was so profound that even rocks suggested she needed to pick up the pace to get on their level. I have often wondered what the hiring practices were at Remus because it certainly feels like search committees play a game of lawn darts to determine who they hire. Unfortunately, the committees are so terrible at the game that they get bored and just throw the dart up in the air and wait for it to come down through their face. Then again, they did hire me. At least I didn’t put anybody’s eye out.

How could somebody possibly screw this gig up? What level of ineptitude must one possess to make the previous professors look stellar in comparison? Let’s break it down by her job responsibilities. Her primary duty as an educator was to educate the children. The task sounds simple enough. A school hires you to pass your expertise on to students so that they can become competent in the field you teach. Whatever her skill set contained, teaching was nowhere to be seen. When I was a kid, I remember the excitement I would have when we watched videos or movies in class. Those were great days because I could shut my brain off. It was a lot like junk food, good here and there, but too much will do some long-term damage. Nobody is supposed to live on it. However, this was Leary’s teaching style. There were no lectures or assignments. Students would come to class to watch a video lecture on a laptop, not even on a projector. She would enter the classroom, set up her tiny laptop, and push play. Within thirty seconds, she was back in her office surfing the Internet while her students sat in a room stuck with a robotic voice explaining the importance of boilerplate press releases. With a teaching style like that, I was shocked she didn’t win student choice for faculty of the year.

She failed so tremendously in the second half of her job responsibilities, which was getting students on the radio, that it almost defies description. It still baffles me that she never fulfilled this part of her job. It would be one thing if she didn’t give students many chances to get behind the microphone. It was another thing entirely that she refused to let a single student on the air. She offered no rationale for this decision. She flippantly denied students the opportunity to go into the recording booth, not even for prerecorded segments, advertisements, or public service announcements. Students later revealed that she wouldn’t let them on the air because she had no competence with the equipment she was supposed to work with. This little nugget of information revealed itself after a major technical glitch shut down the production studio for almost a week. One day she attempted to update an audio program and crashed the entire system. When she tried to recover the computer, several essential programs for recording and syndication were missing from the system. 

The cost to repair the system was nothing substantial, but she did ride the excuse that students would not be able to broadcast because the system crashed. Apparently, the administration did not question this, as the station was still fit to broadcast. The lie was even more blatant as the professional DJ the campus hired was still holding a show during the week. I never was a good liar because something would always betray me while fibbing, especially as a child. Such actions would result in a momentary blackout and later recalling a stinging pain in my rear end. I could not be brazen enough to tell the people paying me bald-faced lies. Yet, here was someone who could say such things without even batting an eye. I can both admire and despise such behavior. However, this lack of decorum would only be the tip of the iceberg for the problems that would shortly surface from underneath.